Tony Leon: On The Record with Adriaan Basson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmzCE6ZhYIQ
No, not every public affairs firm is Bell Pottinger
To draw a parallel between Bell Pottinger and the ordinary, transparent work of helping a lawful business make its case to the government is not just inaccurate – it is a malicious inversion of the truth so complete that it should give every citizen pause, writes Tony Leon. Given his appalling popularity ratings and his party [...]
SA’s state is hollowed out, and 30 June will show us exactly how much
Tony Leon draws on Martin Niemöller’s First They Came, warning that the country’s decaying institutions, political ambivalence, and rising anti-immigrant mob justice are creating a dangerous echo of the scapegoating and silence that enabled atrocities elsewhere. The renewed festival of hate against migrants in South Africa is a timely reminder of the famous 1946 prose of German [...]
Triangulate or tergiversate: The only two moves left in the political playbook
From Bismarck to Blair, the art of political triangulation has delivered landslide victories – but as Cyril Ramaphosa’s hollow pivot on immigration shows, co-opting the politics of others is no substitute for the courage to change your own, writes Tony Leon. If you want to get current politics down to a T here and everywhere, just [...]
The DA’s Kempton Park moment with a shock eight-vote win in Evaton
From the shock of Wakkerstroom in 1924 to the DA’s razor-thin eight-vote victory in a 98% black township nearly a century later, South Africa’s by-elections have often signalled shifts in the political weather long before the storm arrives, writes Tony Leon. Just over a century ago, on 17 June 1924, the National Party won its first [...]
The lessons SA’s leaders don’t want to learn
While Cyril Ramaphosa traded shame and fury in Parliament over SA’s jobs catastrophe, three of the world’s foremost historians gathered in Franschhoek to offer the kind of honest reckoning our leaders refuse to have with themselves, writes Tony Leon. Two sobering insights were offered last week on the state of SA Inc. Last Tuesday, the Quarterly [...]
From Westminster to Phala Phala: Two leaders, one fight for survival GalleryFrom Westminster to Phala Phala: Two leaders, one fight for survival
African National Congress (ANC), British politics, Corruption, Cyril Ramaphosa, Democratic Alliance, International Politics, Parliament, Phala Phala, Sir Keir Starmer, South African Politics, UK Politics, Westminister
From Westminster to Phala Phala: Two leaders, one fight for survival
Two leaders, two continents, one embattled defiance – Keir Starmer and Cyril Ramaphosa are clinging to power, but while Britain’s crisis is political, South Africa’s cuts far deeper, writes Tony Leon. “When the herd moves, it moves,” Boris Johnson ruefully remarked when his Conservative Party forced his exit as UK prime minister in July 2022, just two [...]
External shocks, internal failures: ‘Parasitic state’ will use war as excuse
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 [...]
Tone-deaf ANC could be punished at the polls… just like NP was in 1981
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 [...]
From opposition to coalition: Can the DA survive its govt partnership? GalleryFrom opposition to coalition: Can the DA survive its govt partnership?
African National Congress (ANC), Corruption, Cyril Ramaphosa, Democratic Alliance, EFF, Elections, GNU, Helen Zille, Jacob Zuma, John Steenhuisen, South African Politics
From opposition to coalition: Can the DA survive its govt partnership?
Former DA leader Tony Leon argues the party faces an existential identity crisis as it navigates between its historic role as effective opposition and its current position as part of the GNU, with its upcoming congress serving as a crucial moment to determine whether the party has been “muzzled” by the ANC or can leverage its [...]