By Vusi Mona 1. Introduction The call to regulate religious institutions (not just churches) has become an emotive issue. At worst, it has been personalised and made a Thoko Mkhwanazi Xaluva issue. The latter chairs South Africa’s Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL [...]

When hidden networks manufacture political inevitability, democracy becomes a contest over who owns the state. The contest to succeed President Cyril Ramaphosa is about more than the ambitions of individual leaders within the African National Congress. It is also a struggle among political, economic, and increasingly criminal networks seeking to [...]

This viewpoint argues that South African politics is moving from liberation-derived legitimacy towards a more contingent, interests-driven order. Generational succession is central to this transition. Citizens whose political consciousness was formed after apartheid do not necessarily inherit the affective loyalties, organisational memories or moral obligations that once sustained the African [...]

“The most consequential question raised by South Africa’s recent elections is not whether the African National Congress can recover its majority. It is whether the constitutional democracy the ANC helped to build can outgrow its dependence on ANC incumbency.” Introduction South Africa has entered a political era for which its [...]