The two South African Nationalist movements, the African National Congress and the National Party, established a year apart in 1912 and 1913, have been the dominant players in defining the anti-colonial struggles that unfolded from the beginning of a constitutional state in 1910 until the ultimate non-racialisation of South Africa’s [...]
This was published in TimesLive 02 April 2025, headlined: Tipping point: the uncomfortable truth draws near.The end of post-liberation hegemonic politics is with us. Society is preoccupied with a search for a stable political order, and what we have is deteriorating. The post-May 2024 convulsions have created a desire for [...]
As part of its renewal program, the ANC has established a facility where its members can come together and participate in a course that repositions the ANC at the center of South African history. The course serves as an intervention to clarify the misconceptions, misinterpretations, and narratives surrounding what the [...]
Published in TimesLive 26 March 2025: In search of Mandela: the urgent dilemma of SA leadership successionThe leadership question in South Africa is again coming into the spotlight as society considers who will lead the country after Ramaphosa. The infamous "we all have smallanyana skeletons in the closet" resonates whenever [...]
Lynching is explained as a method of social and racial control meant to terrorise a caste or class into submission or inferior status. This method is commonly used to subvert a rules-based process that the lynching mob and individual know would outlaw. Lynchers administer torment and torture (physical or mental) [...]
Published in TimesLive 20 March 2025The decision by the Afriforum and Solidarity to dare the Ramaphosa-led GNU and mastermind a US-backed campaign to extort outstanding concessions from the CODESA settlement marks a new ideological turn since the 1914 Rebellion against the involvement of the Union of SA in the First [...]
On its way to negotiating with the apartheid regime between 1985 and 1990, the ANC was already under pressure to seize the moral high ground of the struggle against apartheid rather than hope for a hard power type of advantage. The perceived triumph of the liberal order with the US [...]
A defining feature of freedom is that as the frontiers of society's knowledge about it are extended, new mysteries beyond the frontiers become the sharper focus. Post-1994-South Africa is entering a stage where its freedom is gradually getting unencumbered to individuals, institutions, organisations, and political parties that played a role [...]
South African history tells us that the Voortrekkers, Dutch-speaking settlers known as Boers, left the British Cape Colony in Southern Africa between 1835 and the early 1840s in search of independence and new territory. This journey called the Great Trek, involves travelling overland to the continent's interior using ox-drawn wagons. [...]
South Africa celebrates its Human Rights Day as a divided society. How we see each other puts the meaning of humans to the test. The founders of our constitutional order committed us to a society anchored on fundamental human rights. Being human comes with rights. Rights specify entitlement and confer power. [...]
