LAST week in London and Geneva, I addressed groups of somewhat wary investors on SA’s prospects. There were reassuring nods from these audiences when I suggested that for all our challenges and travails, broadly speaking, the rule of law was intact. After all, were we not the nation that 21 years ago, despite the odds, [...]
Grant Thornton, a consultancy, estimates the new visa requirements will cost 100 000 jobs MONDAY, June 1, is “V Day”. This is not shorthand for victory in war but represents the brave new world of South Africa‘s latest visa regime for foreign tourists. It is a triumph, however, of obstinacy over common sense, the sort [...]
However good and well-intentioned a leader you are, your leadership will often be defined by how quickly you douse the fires Some wise owl once observed: “Your victories can land up costing you more than your defeats.” It seems churlish, on the back of his comprehensive and surprising victory last Thursday, to sound this note [...]
Speech by Tony Leon to the DA Federal Congress, Port Elizabeth, Sunday, May 10 2015: “The Power of an Idea” As I was saying at the last DA Congress I spoke at exactly eight years ago yesterday, before I disappeared from your midst- All is not lost if courage remains. We can make South Africa [...]
TWO rather different leadership contests are happening this week. In the UK tomorrow, a new prime minister will be chosen, and in SA on Sunday, the Democratic Alliance (DA) will choose a new leader. The consequences of these choices will have hugely different effects. The UK might count for less in the world these days [...]
True load-shedding would involve the ANC dumping the dead wood of clueless cadres. Is it a contradiction, in these darkened days and nights of load-shedding, to have a light-bulb moment? Actually, you can - especially if you live, as I do, in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. And this has nothing to do with [...]
Leaders should stop thinking their electorate are stupid and and own up to blunders they make. When he assumed the presidency, he was widely regarded - to borrow a phrase from Helen Zille - as "unfit for purpose". He was relatively undereducated and the product of a corrupt political machine. He was only picked for [...]
Next year’s local government poll, and articulating a credible message for it, is the test Helen Zille’s successor will have to pass — and time is limited. Here's the story of two sisters on different ships leaving Nazi Germany in 1938. The one ship arrived in South Africa and the other sailed on to Argentina. [...]
As Karl Marx observed: 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please' In May 2007, I stood down as leader of the DA after seven years as its head and, six years before that, as the leader of its predecessor movement, the Democratic Party. Thirteen exhilarating, exhausting and often [...]
Logic pushed to back seat as past is reinvented by rage AS OUR local brigades of "Monuments Men" move around SA removing or redecorating symbols from our conflicted past, there’s an old joke from the Soviet Union that has currency. A listener calls up a radio station with the question: "Comrade, is it possible to [...]
