US elections

Will Trump buy what Rasool is selling?

"Retrospective clairvoyance" was the arch phrase of Clive James for the miraculous ability of pundits (me included) to deduce this week an event that was "inevitable" last week, though it was not actually seen as likely at the time. Thus, the sweeping win of Donald Trump last Tuesday has birthed endless analyses of why it [...]

Graceful concession: Small Botswana offers lessons to giant US

A panel beat of Shakespeare to fit modern elections, referencing last week's graceful presidential concession in Botswana, would read, "Nothing in his political life became him like leaving it." We live in a rough political neighbourhood with stolen elections in Zimbabwe now normalised, violent killings recently visited on the opposition in Mozambique, and a feudal [...]

Can Ramaphosa’s multiparty govt revive South Africa’s stature in global affairs?

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 [...]

Hubris syndrome claims the pretend king of Gauteng

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 [...]

Faced with a difficult election, the ANC is fuelling a ‘paranoid style of politics’

At the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, pop sensation, an understatement, Taylor Swift became the first honouree to win Album of the Year for the fourth time, eclipsing Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra and Stevie Wonder in the process. At just 54kgs, Taylor Swift bestrides the world of music today as a modern-day colossus, her concerts [...]

It seems ANC chicanery can bring deeply divided US parties together

You have to hand it to the ANC and our spectacularly misnamed department of international relations and co-operation (Dirco). Both have achieved the rarest of rare feats: uniting the bitterly factitious and brutally acrimonious Democrats and Republicans in the US Capitol. The two major parties, which control the three branches of the US government, agree [...]

Democracy is slowly chipping away at the denialists in the US

Last Tuesday, election day for the mid-terms in the US, found famed American historian and presidential envoy Deborah Lipstadt thousands of kilometres from home. Instead, she was addressing a seminar at the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. Lipstadt, who achieved celluloid fame via her portrayal by Rachel Weisz in [...]

Ramaphosa’s meeting with US president a non-event, just like his reforms

One of Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite aphorisms was, apparently, “I have to be seen to be believed”. Yesterday, after the pomp, circumstances and flummery of her state funeral at Westminster, and later, her final committal at Windsor, her grandson Prince William, the Prince of Wales, tweeted “5.1 billon people watched the queen’s funeral, 63% of [...]

Babbling while Ukraine burns

For the least populated area in America, the Mountain West state of Wyoming has received outsize attention across the world in recent days. That’s because it was the site of the landslide defeat in a primary election of US congresswoman Liz Cheney, a three-term US Representative. Cheney is the daughter of a Republican dynasty headed by [...]

Slow and sedate Ramaphosa, so unlike fast and furious Trump

Having placed three bets on a Joe Biden presidential win, I was greatly relieved when the US networks called his election last week, even if the votes are still being counted and recounted, and Donald Trump refuses to concede and proclaims he was cheated out of victory. Six bottles of France’s finest bubbles have already [...]

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