By Stan Itshegetseng South Africa mistook silence for weakness and noise for leadership. A political narrative repeated for years deserves one final inconvenience: the evidence. There comes a point in politics when a description is repeated so often that few remember who first proved it—or whether it was ever proved [...]

“Anti-corruption is indispensable, but it cannot become an alibi for preserving inherited patterns of economic exclusion”. Every political era acquires a language through which it explains both its hopes and its evasions. Apartheid spoke the language of order while constructing a racial state founded on dispossession, exclusion and coercion. The [...]

“A liberation movement earns its place in history; a governing party must earn its mandate at every election.” The African National Congress’s local government manifesto faces a dilemma no liberation rhetoric can resolve: it still advances liberation promises, yet the electorate increasingly judges it as a political party. In the [...]

Political orders do not first fall in parliament; they recede wherever ordinary people cease to encounter the state as a bearer of dignity. Political orders rarely unravel in a single dramatic moment. More often, they lose coherence gradually: inherited loyalties weaken, institutions cease to command confidence, internal organisational norms decay [...]