"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other", writes Charles Dickens in his celebrated work, A Tale of Two Cities. In articulating disdain for apartheid, a crime against humanity, Capetonians were once again seen united in [...]
The 2023 Rugby World Cup victory by a Siya Kolisi-led South African team will go into history as an event that confirmed how non-racial unity can redefine the essence of being South African. Since the 1995 victory against the All Blacks, South Africanness has been spiralling towards a zero performance [...]
This is the oldest question humanity has asked to illustrate various societal phenomena. It was so acute that it generated a multi-millennia-old proverb: 'There is no smoke without fire'. But then, can there be smoke without fire? To answer this question, let's start with what is smoke? A Google search [...]
In August 2023, South Africa celebrated the 40th anniversary of the United Democratic Front. The UDF was one of the most formidable and impactful mass-based, non-racial, and democratic civil society movements in South Africa. Organised to articulate the correctness of the minimum demands of society as enshrined in the 1955 [...]
The South African Constitution declares that everyone has a right to basic and further education. Without free and compulsory education paid for by the state, society will be vulnerable to an unnatural aristocracy formed by those who afford paid and private education. The desire to have the white race of [...]
Wealth and power, the motive force for most tensions and conflicts affecting humanity, are moving away from their dispossession-determined locations in Africa. The colonial order is giving way to a new African order that is increasingly crafted by a new cohort of self-determined and purpose-driven Africans inspired by the possibility [...]
Global competitiveness is a function of (national) leadership. The predictability of societal stability is measured through the depth of the leadership it has on the horizon. Investor confidence is directly related to the capability of would-be key persons in the national leadership grid a society presents to those not interior [...]
The familiar and straightforward models of land-dispossession-anchored-global-capitalist economic system centre around using nation-state-driven violence to sustain the dispossession as a means to legitimise the system of global-north-domination. The origins of such a system are traced from how the global north agreed on its version of sovereignty and which geographical spaces [...]
Published in the Sunday Times on 22 October 2023A performance of less than 50% by South African political parties in the 2024 national and provincial elections will result in coalition governments. Opinion polls indicate there might not be a 50% winner in the national elections. Mzwandile Masina, former mayor of [...]
An edited version was published in the Sunday Times on 01 October 2023South Africa is blessed with a unique context of having its heads of state living long enough to see the good and bad of what they presided upon. At last count, the previous seven Presidents lived long enough [...]
