My recent reimmersion into the murky waters of SA politics during the negotiation for the new and very large government of national unity was a reminder of why I quit political leadership in 2007. I have renewed admiration for those who toil at the political grindstone but, politics like acting (and former British prime minister [...]
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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 [...]
"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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Uncosted, untested, and – arguably – unconstitutional, our consensus-loving President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law last week the National Health Insurance Act. "Whether you like it or not" is the new eve-of-poll presidential mantra. One can only look in wonderment at how the state – over three decades – has ravaged and pillaged practically every [...]
For a good dose of inflated rhetoric, dodgy statistics and magical thinking, check out the ANC's 2024 election manifesto. The last section of the document, dealing with international relations, takes grandiosity to new heights, even as South Africa plunges to new lows of foreign interest. Recently, former finance minister Trevor Manuel underlined how far we [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
