Historian CV Wedgwood wrote: “History is written backward but lived forward. Those who know the end of the story can never know what it was like at the time.” Very few, even if not present in the infamous Gupta compound in Saxonwold, won’t know the result of the extraordinary testimony at the Zondo commission, offered [...]
It is probably incautious in these incendiary times to remind readers of an acclaimed poet from the mid-Victorian era. Danger acknowledged, Matthew Arnold's elegiac composition, on the loss of faith and certainty, seems unusually modern and fits right in with the clamorous background noise that characterises SA in 2021. Although Arnold had in mind the [...]
SA leads the world’s constitutional democracies in its supply of judicial talent. That is the rational explanation for the decision-making processes applied by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), the body entrusted by the constitution with recommending candidates for appointment to the various divisions of our courts. How else to explain its recent decision to decline [...]
The death last week of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose extraordinary long and consequential life was heralded across the world, has occasioned many reminiscences from thousands of encounters with His Royal Highness. For while Prince Philip always walked two steps behind his wife, Queen Elizabeth II, he was usually several paces in front of [...]
Using the old South African trope of eliding the 27-year-in-office government from any blame or accountability for its missteps was given a whole new meaning on Monday. The usual all-purpose, all-weather ruse of blaming apartheid is more challenging in respect of the novel coronavirus which only took root here last March, almost 26 years after [...]
In 1977, when apartheid was at its zenith and Johannesburg still had a booming city centre, I helped organise a conference at a five-star establishment, the President Hotel, where, as a first-year university student, I was hugely impressed by the passion and profundity of our keynote speaker, the 46-year-old firebrand secretary-general of the South African [...]
In 2011 Cyril Ramaphosa added to his personal fortune when he secured a 20-year deal, via his Shanduka Group, to run all 145 McDonald’s restaurants in SA. In 2016 he sold his franchise rights for “an undisclosed sum” to a Middle Eastern company. No doubt the president still has a fond attachment to junk food’s [...]
A famous historian archly observed that “the wheel of history is often turned by the god of irony”. We have no shortage of examples of this fundamental truth. Joel Netshitenzhe, regarded as the reigning intellect of the governing party here, popularised the adage, “the sins of incumbency”. In June 2012, when Jacob Zuma was in [...]
Despite the magic of [Nelson] Mandela and the so-called rainbow miracle, 900,000 South Africans left the country from 1990 to 2018. Although this covers all eras from [FW] De Klerk through to [Jacob] Zuma, it gives a flavour of the size of the exodus. And the group with the greatest mobility and the easiest options [...]
When I was leader of the opposition, I once compared the job with its certain punishments and uncertain prospects as “making bricks without straw”. Sometimes there were opportunities to reach and targets to hit, but equally the very basics for construction were often missing. From a now vanished age, late United Party MP and opposition [...]
