The (untimely) death of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been received with mixed emotions by South Africans from all walks of life. There have been varieties of political grandstanding, ranging from outright disparaging remarks about his life to remarks about him having been one of the most outstanding leaders of South Africa. [...]
Yes, death is a mighty and universal truth. When it strikes, an array of virtues rise in mercy, compassion, memory, legacy, and love. Of every tear that we, the sorrowing mortals, shed on graves such as that awaits many of those we consider our leaders, some good might be born [...]
After the Mandela-led Constituent Assembly adopted the 1996 Constitution, the ideal of a non-racial, non-sexist, united, and democratic South Africa looked set to define a new nationhood. The racial and equality tensions that characterised society seemed to have melted into the liberation promise the Constitution guaranteed all citizens. After centuries [...]
Leadership is the art of being followed and revered for what your last performance was about. When society invokes your past to impose it to your present, there is something about your present that does not inspire confidence to face a future with you as a leader. Capturing the imagination [...]
The thought of possible coalition governing arrangements by the 'liberation party' (the ANC), the implicit support by South Africa's civil society and other political parties, and the endorsement of the process by the economic establishment is a good sign about the health of our democracy. This might be the clearest [...]
Edited version was published in the Sunday Times on 20 August 2023The implications of a below 50% threshold election result by all political parties in South Africa will be both a positive test of the resilience of the fragile democratic order and a liability to how it operates on behalf [...]
Up until the EFF became the first opposition political party in South Africa to fill the FNB stadium, many people refused to believe that it is an alternative in the making, if not a new political force to reckon with. Notwithstanding warnings from ANC youth leaguers who were part of [...]
The 2024 National Elections will be the most consequential in defining the true ideological position of the broad church of South Africa, the ANC. The liberation struggle, if enfranchisement was its fundamental goal, has ended. What might be outstanding is the pursuit of the National Democratic Revolution. The steady decline [...]
Like any system, a democratic order is susceptible to disruptions it least anticipates. Democracies navigate complex paths created by those agreeing to govern themselves. One of the most significant disruptors of a democracy is when an election happens, and there is no outright winner. This disrupts paradigms of the majority [...]
Africa, and South Africa as its abstraction in this rendition, has a wealth of experience and intelligence, or rather wisdom, that its development challenges are incongruent with the knowledge it commands. The nodes of influence of its past leaders at all levels, mainly those interior to its struggles, should be [...]
