When Donald J Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president on 20 January 2017, he delivered a dystopian speech on the state of his nation, summarised as "American Carnage". Leaving that event, George W Bush, the 43rd president and last Republican to hold that office before Trump, remarked on his successor's oration: "That was some weird s..t." [...]
I hope that the new government of national unity (GNU) both endures and delivers real change in the lives of many citizens. As one Cabinet minister expressed to me recently, the answer to estimates on its longevity is summed up in the acronym TINA (there is no alternative). Of course, his sentiment is sound, even [...]
"The butterfly effect" explains how a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon triggers a massive storm across Europe. As John Gribbin explains the work of meteorologist Edward Lorenz, who first developed this chaos theory: Some systems are very sensitive to their starting conditions, so that a tiny difference in the initial push you give [...]
Consider an alternate history written for the 29 May elections in South Africa. As a work of historical fiction – based on real characters and actual events – it could include these "facts": The DA leader, the largest opposition party, is banned from participating in the poll; the ANC, the governing party, is accorded unfettered [...]
Timing in life and politics is everything. So, spare a thought for new Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau. He arrived on Tuesday in Washington DC, as head of a government-business delegation seeking to engage Congress and the White House on retaining our Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) privileges and mitigating the fallout from [...]
On Thursday evening, many South Africans will tune in to Cyril Ramaphosa's opening address to Parliament on behalf of his newly installed multiparty government. But few in the world will take notice. This is not just because Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka, no doubt accurately, opined recently that "South Africa has become irrelevant in terms of [...]
The 1996 Constitution formalised the office and role of the leader of the opposition. Section 57(1)(d) of the Constitution obliges the National Assembly to recognise "the leader of the largest opposition party in the Assembly as the Leader of the Opposition". The first holder of the post was also the briefest occupant of the office: [...]
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 [...]
