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 2023 The 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 [...]