This week the seismic tremors measured north of nine on the political Richter scale as the once impregnable ANC found itself under a heap of rubble with one citadel after another falling to its opponents. Still, even after the tectonic plates shifted so decisively under the giant’s feet, there were some upsides for the country’s [...]
Over 30 years ago when I first arrived in parliament, an old ward heeler who knew his way around there advised newcomer MPs: “The first law of politics is to be present.” Spare a thought then for Refiloe Nts’ekhe. She had been presented in the election as the DA mayoral candidate for Ekurheleni. But at [...]
Alongside the fading light of Eskom, the refulgent blaze of the ANC’s electoral comet shines far less brightly since last Monday. That, at least, is the one takeaway from the outcome of the local polls of 2021. In ancient Rome, the Etruscans were highly regarded for their ability for reading “auspices”, like blazing comets, and discerning [...]
“You cannot fatten a pig on market day.” This adage from British politics resonates here and now in the dismal run-up to polling day on November 1. The implication is that unless you have a track record of delivery, or even basic decency established well ahead of voting day, you are unlikely to reap the [...]
A milch cow is defined by the Collins English dictionary as “a source of easy income”. In SA, governments at the national and local levels find that source in middle-class taxpayers and ratepayers — usually the same people. But now the milch cow is variously exhausted, overburdened or fleeing to foreign fields. In addition to the [...]
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 [...]
Tolstoy, observing a tree, reminds us that “the leaves enchant us more than the roots”. In the gale of commentary that gusted after the DA’s recent policy reset, the party appears to have caught some high winds of disapproval. This is surprising for at least two obvious reasons. Neither of these were articulated in the [...]
Peace is a universal desired end and its achievement is as cherished even as the concept remains often elusive. “Peace with honour” is an even better idea, suggesting that its attainment can be founded on principle. It is just a pity that the term is imperishably associated with the man who first claimed to have [...]
The late former leader of the parliamentary opposition, Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, once said that to do his job “you need iron in the soul”. That phrase provides the title for an interesting book I read recently on the leaders of the official opposition here, authored by Unisa academic Alex Mouton. An even bleaker prospect was [...]
As South Africans endure the seventh week of home imprisonment, the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is, to borrow from the song in The King and I, “a puzzlement”. First puzzle is our new overlord, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. She seems to imagine that viral microbes possess an intelligence wing. And while several of her fellow ministers, [...]
