How might the Steve Smith-led Aussie ball-tampering scandal at Newlands inform some of the key issues affecting the body politic and our economy? The obvious answer is that even the prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, on Sunday described the incident as “completely beyond belief” and called for “decisive action” from Cricket Australia. Incidentally, this [...]
Here's a remarkable and democratically depressing fact: South African voters rarely change their national government. Under the whites-only franchise until 1989, the National Party won an extraordinary 11 consecutive elections. Since the advent of full democracy in 1994, the ANC has won five polls on the trot. The 40-plus percentage points separating the ANC from [...]
In Malema’s delicate phraseology, “We are going for your white man, we are going to cut your throat” His view on nationals from the key Brics nations? “Chinese are like Indians. They think they are close to whiteness. When they practise racism, they are even worse than whites.” Of course this bilious and crude ethnic [...]
More than 250 years ago the second US president offered a slice of wisdom that might just resonate this week with SA’s fifth democratic president. It certainly informs the praise and criticism of Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration, now less than a month old. In 1770, John Adams, arguing in defence of soldiers in the Boston massacre, [...]
