FW de Klerk once said, “Australia’s greatest problem is that it has no great problem- nobody can say that about South Africa.” While South Africa in the past few days lived up to VI Lenin’s aphorism ‘there are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen ‘– I found myself faraway “Down Under”. I [...]
Theresa May supremely in control of her country and party and the Brexit process; Angela Merkel, the indispensable leader of the western world, cruising to a resounding win in the German election; Donald Trump on course to blow up the US economy or to impeachment; Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma odds-on favourite to succeed her namesake as South [...]
For the purpose of a new book which I have been commissioned to write‚ I have recently delved into the origins of the term ‘political correctness.’ Instinctively‚ perhaps congenitally‚ I am incapable of being ‘politically correct’. By this I mean subscribing or authoring opinions which hew to orthodoxy‚ however at variance with the facts on [...]
South Africa’s ruling party elects a new president; he assures audiences at home and abroad that he will herald an era of desperately needed reform leading to political and economic recovery. National and international opinion is deeply divided. The optimists, in short supply after the ruinous misrule of his unpopular predecessor, cling to the hope [...]
A few days late and many dollars short‚ as the old saying goes‚ Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday in East London delivered the ANC January 8 statement in celebration of the movement’s 106th anniversary. The lack of funds is not a reflection on the self-styled Buffalo Man’s huge net worth‚ but on the costly populist promises [...]
Ramaphosa has to confront financial realities while placating populist lobby and dealing with land reform Plettenberg Bay is the poster resort for the glaring inequalities confronting SA — magnificent R50m mansions overlooking Robberg Beach, a proverbial stone’s throw from the shacks dotting nearby New Horizons settlement. Plett, though, was also the place where I had [...]
Shortly after Cyril Ramaphosa’s narrow victory , a senior opposition MP offered a vivid metaphor wrapped in a back handed compliment to the new ANC president. “It’s like a piece of driftwood which you grab with both hands in a stormy sea after a shipwreck”, my informant suggested. Ten years after the Jacob Zuma tsunami [...]
President bangs on about unity, but it is he himself who infected a party that is falling further apart by the day Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has warned South Africans who display symptoms of lysteriosis, a dread disease caused by bacterium found in soil, water and vegetation, to seek urgent medical assistance. But this outbreak, [...]
Party politics aside, what is best for us as citizens? This time a decade ago, when the ANC was defenestrating its then all-powerful president Thabo Mbeki, I was an ocean away in the ice and snow which encased Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Being gifted with a five-month fellowship at the university's John F Kennedy [...]
Black Friday arrived on these shores in triplicate last week. First there was the chaotic retail therapy which saw smashed shopping mall windows, crashed e-commerce websites and big bargains as South Africans went shopping. Second there was Robert Mugabe's inglorious end as the 93-year-old despot gave way to a 75-year-old successor with, to be diplomatic, [...]
