“As by fire” is the evocative phrase from the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians, which was recently used by Jonathan Jansen as title for his apocalyptic take on the “end of the South African university”. When fires swept through the houses of parliament on January 2, I had many thoughts — literary, historical and [...]
To insert thread through the eye of a needle is the basic, though skilled, accomplishment of every seamstress. In politics, a needle-threader is someone who can pass something through a narrow space between two often diametrically opposite impulses or ideas. In the US, president Richard Nixon was regarded by some as a needle-threader extraordinaire: he [...]
In 2004, British playwright Michael Frayn’s award-winning play Democracy achieved both critical and commercial success, despite its seemingly dull premise: German politics in the 1970s. I watched the performance in London at the time, utterly mesmerised as the play toggled between two themes. First, the highly charged political drama — the fall of left-wing West [...]
Stanley Baldwin, three times British prime minister in the interwar years, opined on his departure from parliament in 1937, “Once I leave, I leave. I am not going to speak to the man on the bridge and I am not going to spit on the deck.” I have sometimes followed this advice and have very seldom [...]
This week the seismic tremors measured north of nine on the political Richter scale as the once impregnable ANC found itself under a heap of rubble with one citadel after another falling to its opponents. Still, even after the tectonic plates shifted so decisively under the giant’s feet, there were some upsides for the country’s [...]
Over 30 years ago when I first arrived in parliament, an old ward heeler who knew his way around there advised newcomer MPs: “The first law of politics is to be present.” Spare a thought then for Refiloe Nts’ekhe. She had been presented in the election as the DA mayoral candidate for Ekurheleni. But at [...]
FW de Klerk’s death last week saw an explosion of commentary, with gazillions of electrons and acres of newsprint exhausted on his contested legacy. It all traces back to one fateful day nearly 32 years ago. At about 1pm on Friday, February 2 1990, then co-leader of the now-vanished Democratic Party (DP) Wynand Malan hosted [...]
FW de Klerk shaped many of the country's recent political contours. Yet like the proverbial prophet, by November 2019 on the afternoon of our last get-together, he enjoyed little honour in his own land. On the one hand, he was reviled by the governing party for being the "last apartheid president". He was also, to [...]
Alongside the fading light of Eskom, the refulgent blaze of the ANC’s electoral comet shines far less brightly since last Monday. That, at least, is the one takeaway from the outcome of the local polls of 2021. In ancient Rome, the Etruscans were highly regarded for their ability for reading “auspices”, like blazing comets, and discerning [...]
Back in 1970, in the whites-only general election, the United Party (UP) campaigned with a poster: “Want TV? Vote UP!” My progressive teenage set ridiculed the official opposition for such a marginal message, given the miseries of apartheid. However, in that poll, for the first time in six elections, the UP actually gained seats off [...]
