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 [...]
Away from the Eskom horror show, far be it for me to rain on the “People’s Dialogue” to be launched soon by Herman Mashaba and Mmusi Maimane. However, a weather check may be in order to see whether a shaft of light may yet appear in our current darkness. There is an elephant’s graveyard in [...]
In the furies of social media, it is worth a reminder that obituary writers declaring the death of political parties often turn out to be premature. Or even dead wrong. In 1994, at the dawn of our democracy, many death notices were penned for the Democratic Party, which had a dreadful election on the back [...]
Commentators should be indebted to The Times (of London) ace columnist Clare Foges for transposing the medical affliction Achromatopsia, or colour blindness, and applying it to the bewildering world of (non) Brexit Britain. In her Monday offering, Foges noted that the Conservative Party – hitherto the most successful and enduring party in the Western world, the “natural [...]
I once compared being leader of the opposition to making bricks without straw. You desire to change things or shift opinion, but objectively lack an essential ingredient to do so. Tony Blair on the comparison said: “When I was leader of the opposition I started the day with ‘what can I say’; now that I [...]
By wisely turning away from the baubles of premiership, the DA leader avoided splitting the party leadership Last week in London I attended a dinner with some starring members of the British political establishment. The entire menu of conversations covered Brexit, and that was a day before Theresa May was ambushed by the European Union [...]
Leaders who create the right conditions to keep millionaires find that all of their residents – not just the wealthy ones – are richer for it Writing about the super-rich in South Africa is hardly the formula to win plaudits from the politically correct or the army of virtue-signalling trolls who inhabit the Twittersphere and [...]
What has our burning topic du jour, ‘expropriation without compensation’ to do with the price of bread? Or, less obviously, with the cost of bread-making machines? Clearly, if the Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) fantastical policy prescriptions of wholesale property confiscations, state ownership of banks and the destruction of the private sector came to pass [...]
Like the Roman emperor, those who do the dance of opposites need more than a wall of mirrors to guard against stabbings in the back A few days ago I viewed the ruins of the palace of the emperor Domitian on the Palatine Hill opposite Rome’s famous Colosseum. Our informative guide provided no end of [...]
The fiasco around the rapid ousting of Cape Town mayor Peter Marais 17 years ago also differs from the damaging drawn-out imbroglio The DA is in turmoil. The party leadership attempts to fire its Cape Town mayor, who is both coloured and a populist, though also someone who has migrated across the party political map. [...]
