As disillusionment grows and 80% of the population has no direct memory of that 1994 milestone, Tony Leon warns that dumbing down history education will only deepen the disconnect. A wise caution on how we recall the past, and who does the recording, was offered by historian CV Wedgwood. She noted: “History is lived forwards, [...]
Tony Leon examines how newly appointed South African ambassador Roelf Meyer faces the near-impossible task of reconciling South Africa’s racial transformation policies with Donald Trump’s administration’s fierce opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. Consequences will follow the appointment of Roelf Meyer by President Cyril Ramaphosa as SA ambassador to the US. Though one of them [...]
New DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis inherits a 25-year-old question from former French PM Lionel Jospin about whether his party can evolve from opposition to a genuine governing alternative – and he’s betting everything on a resounding “yes” for 2029, writes Tony Leon. Last month, France’s former socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin died aged 88. His death [...]
Geordin Hill-Lewis served as Chief of Staff to former DA leaders Helen Zille and Mmusi Maimane. He was the youngest Member of Parliament when elected in 2011, at the age of 24. Now 39, he takes over the reins from John Steenhuisen as the new leader of the Democratic Alliance. The question now is: what [...]
While R1.5 trillion has been promised at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s investment conference, South Africa’s actual capital formation has plummeted from 20 to 14% of GDP, suggesting that real investment – like Natie Kirsh’s R500 billion business empire built in America – requires genuine structural reforms and competitive markets, not just pledges, writes Tony Leon. “Cyril loves [...]
News24’s On the Record summit revealed a country heavy on tactics but lacking the strategic vision and political will to make the hard policy trade-offs—from labour market reform to BEE changes—needed to break free from its self-imposed “Bermuda Triangle” of high unemployment, low growth, and scarce investment, writes Tony Leon. Jürgen Habermas, the brave liberal German intellectual, [...]
As the Iran conflict threatens to derail South Africa’s optimistic budget assumptions, the country’s “parasitic state” will once again finds a convenient external excuse for SA’s internal failures, writes Tony Leon. South Africa, along with the world, now confronts a vastly reshaped and malign economic outlook, untethered to previous assumptions etched as recently as the benign [...]
The ANC’s rose-tinted view of its struggle-era alliances is preventing South Africa from learning the hard lessons that could actually liberate its people from unemployment and institutional decay, writes Tony Leon. For devout Hindus, the waters of the River Ganges cleanse believers of sin and help achieve liberation (moksha). In the secular South African realm, the [...]
The recent arrests of Prince Andrew and President Yoon, along with a US Supreme Court ruling against Trump, signal a global reassertion of the rule of law. Tony Leon reflects whether it is a similar case in South Africa. “That Was the Week That Was”, the title of a 1960s British satirical revue, sprang vividly [...]
Just as a National Party minister’s comment about pensioners surviving on R20 a month helped trigger the party’s 1981 electoral decline, today’s ANC leaders are making similarly tone-deaf remarks – from booking hotel baths during water shortages to claiming hospital patients choose to sleep on floors. This could prove electorally disastrous for a party now [...]
