Former DA leader @TonyLeonSA tells @Bruceps that DA ministers in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet are not going to be hogtied and will be able to make their presence felt.
Hear the full episode here: https://shorturl.at/R6QQV
The ANC faces its own ‘Sophie’s choice’
Realpolitik - or the triumph of ruthless pragmatism in pursuit of national ends - is a word correctly associated with Germany's "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck, whose 19 years in office (1871-1890) forged the modern German state. Popularly, but apparently incorrectly, attributed to Bismarck is the aphorism: "Anyone who loves the law or sausages should never [...]
The most difficult part of the GNU starts right now
"Never make predictions, least of all about the future" is wise advice. Undeterred by such caution, three years ago, in 2021, in my book, Future Tense - Reflections on my Troubled Land, I suggested that, in 2024, 30 years after the founding democratic election here, the liberation party would likely run out of road and face defeat [...]
A crucial fork in the road for South Africa’s future
Never has the Chinese curse or cliché, "May you live in interesting times," been more fitting for South Africa in the aftermath of the momentous 29 May election. As we navigate genuinely uncharted waters, it could be said that the map to hand, our Constitution, will guide us safely to calmer waters. That is both [...]
Spot the difference: ANC’s populist pivot in 2024 election
Decades back, the Sunday newspapers boasted large comic supplements featuring everyone from Prince Valiant to Batman. One weekly cartoon was called "Spot the Difference". It sported a two-panel drawing each of which looked, at first blush, identical to the other. But in fact, the second panel contained some subtle differences from the first drawing. The job [...]
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Political firestorm over DA ‘burning’ SA flag, not a peep about ANC ‘invasion’ of KZN GalleryPolitical firestorm over DA ‘burning’ SA flag, not a peep about ANC ‘invasion’ of KZN
African National Congress (ANC), British politics, Democratic Alliance, EFF, Elections, Helen Zille, South African Politics
Political firestorm over DA ‘burning’ SA flag, not a peep about ANC ‘invasion’ of KZN
The late Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert, who led the official opposition in Parliament from 1979 until his resignation in 1986, was critical of my term of office in the same position. At the time of my own resignation, years later in 2007, he suggested that my political and parliamentary style was "pure Westminster". The debate on what [...]
When legends overshadow truth: Beyond blaming Zuma
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, writer, and historian, noted in 2018 in the New York Review of Books that "the encrustations of mythologising and hero worship have gone beyond the point that they can be easily corrected". This phenomenon was neatly summarised in a line at the end of the 1962 Hollywood blockbuster movie, The man who shot Liberty Valance: When the legend becomes fact, [...]
Spectre of ANC-EFF coalition: Low probability, high anxiety
After the fog of war lifted from the industrial-scale slaughter which characterised the killing fields of the First World War, which ended in 1918, a psychoanalyst offered an acute observation. Sometimes, he suggested, the difference whether a soldier was awarded a medal for gallantry or was executed for cowardice, "depended in which direction the person [...]
Cough syrup slogan saga: Lessons beyond health
The political history of South Africa during the apogee of apartheid in the 1960s and early 1970s is well canvassed, even if interpretations remain deeply contested. Less attention is paid to the cultural dimension of living under a dour state-imposed Calvinism – no television, no Sunday sport or entertainment, and a draconian censorship regime which [...]
Whom you plan to vote for is a small question that has massive implications
Last week's death of social psychologist Daniel Kahneman, 90, was commemorated by economists across the world even though he never studied economics even as an undergraduate. But he did win the 2002 Nobel Prize for economic science. Puzzles, biases and paradoxes were core to Kahneman's insights. In fact, he, along with his lifetime collaborator Amos [...]