Tony Leon considers the first anniversary of South Africa’s coalition government, reflecting on the ANC’s political decline, the DA’s limited power in the partnership, and the challenges of restoring voter faith amid mounting dissatisfaction. On 11 June 2024, exactly one year ago, the DA presented its “framework agreement” for a coalition government to govern South Africa [...]
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent encounter at the White House revealed that South Africans have all succumbed to “Trump derangement syndrome” in varying different degrees, writes Tony Leon. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa went to the White House on a “working visit” to meet the US president and nothing much happened. No one in the world, least [...]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3PA-MT8dCA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqRvKQGP9Xs
The recent row over the VAT increase obscured some of the real issues which go to the heart of the economic policies which have added layers to the mountain of unemployment which disfigures our national landscape and have cratered our economy, writes Tony Leon. Any sentient South African who watched the 1988 comedy movie A Fish Called [...]
As Colin Eglin's centenary passes unnoticed, Paul Mashatile employs Trumpian tactics to undermine institutions others built. The contrast is stark, writes Tony Leon, from principled constitutional craftsmanship to power-hungry opportunism masquerading as progress. Monday, 14 April 2025, marked the centenary of the birth of Colin Eglin. Both this anniversary and the man himself are mostly [...]
In an act of conspicuous national self-destruction, the ANC has set the scene for the ejection of the DA from the GNU, writes Tony Leon. Circa 1899, the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, developed the idea of "screen memory". This suggested that one memory can function to hide another, typically, unconscious mental content. Perhaps only psychologists [...]
Gaslighting - which derives its name from a popular 1930’s movie - is a psychological condition denoting a "form of emotional manipulation in which a person aims to have the victim question their judgement, perception and sense of reality by deliberately and systematically feeding false information". In turn, this leads - for the target of [...]
Imagine a democratic country where members of the governing party called each other "Comrade"; where its Cabinet members were split between democratic centrists and socialist ideologues. Its high-spending government presided over a low-growth, high-unemployment economy, and it faced headwinds from being over-borrowed in a weakening currency and from external foreign shocks over which it had [...]
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once mused: "If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat." This thought is useful to interrogate the recent flurry of announcements from President Cyril Ramaphosa. A win? Start with the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA) "win" of mid-December 2024. On the day of [...]
