When it comes to ‘representivity’ among its leaders the ruling party does not exactly walk its talk Perhaps in his briefing folder for last week’s Brics summit in Sandton, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had an article from The Times of India datelined July 23 2011. It is headlined “Durban is largest ‘Indian city outside [...]
Novelist Alan Hollinghurst describes a young biographer in search of his elderly late subject’s legacy. He writes of someone who ‘was asking for memories, too young himself to himself to know that memories were only memories of memories’. Two recent South African deaths and their respective memorialisations –just weeks apart in the past month – [...]
Ramaphosa’s early exit from London last week was a rude reminder of a fundamental political truth It ranks as a great cosmic irony. Cyril Ramaphosa’s debut on the world stage as president is interrupted by the suppurating standoff in the far northwestern corner of his local empire. No doubt Ramaphosa would have preferred to have [...]
'Even our most objective analysts did not even a month ago anticipate a looming trade war' South Africa is embroiled in a number of raucous debates – land, inequality, race, Jacob Zuma’s appearance in the criminal dock, Vicki Momberg’s jail sentence and, more recently, how to remember Winnie Mandela. But in this war of words [...]
There are enough tools to carry out land reform without pulling bricks from of the finely balanced Constitution Apart from hurling abuse at cheating Australian cricketers, one of SA’s most popular pastimes, politically, is looking through the rear-view mirror. Every anniversary, birth and death, from the great and the good to the great and the [...]
How might the Steve Smith-led Aussie ball-tampering scandal at Newlands inform some of the key issues affecting the body politic and our economy? The obvious answer is that even the prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, on Sunday described the incident as “completely beyond belief” and called for “decisive action” from Cricket Australia. Incidentally, this [...]
Here's a remarkable and democratically depressing fact: South African voters rarely change their national government. Under the whites-only franchise until 1989, the National Party won an extraordinary 11 consecutive elections. Since the advent of full democracy in 1994, the ANC has won five polls on the trot. The 40-plus percentage points separating the ANC from [...]
In Malema’s delicate phraseology, “We are going for your white man, we are going to cut your throat” His view on nationals from the key Brics nations? “Chinese are like Indians. They think they are close to whiteness. When they practise racism, they are even worse than whites.” Of course this bilious and crude ethnic [...]
More than 250 years ago the second US president offered a slice of wisdom that might just resonate this week with SA’s fifth democratic president. It certainly informs the praise and criticism of Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration, now less than a month old. In 1770, John Adams, arguing in defence of soldiers in the Boston massacre, [...]
But there are some early and welcome signs that his presidency will find ways to deal with it Last Wednesday, on the flight back to Cape Town from Johannesburg – the tail end of a long haul journey which commenced two days before in Sydney, Australia – I bumped into an old political acquaintance. Pravin Gordhan, [...]
