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 [...]
Published in the Sunday Times on 08 October 2023In his editorial of 01 October 2023, Sunday Times editor Sthembiso Msomi submits that it feels like the government has given up on recovery. He 'laments' that since 2007 "building a capable state has been a popular phrase...yet on close examination, the [...]
We seldom meet people who make an indelible mark in our very lives that we realise after they have departed this world how big a gap they filled. As we grow up, we meet and designate titles to people we encounter. Some we are born into defined relationships with them, and [...]
The South African liberation struggle for a democratic order has the country's Constitution as the legal document defining the end and arguably success of the struggle. The 1996 Constitution is the basis upon which the Republic of South Africa is considered one sovereign and democratic state. Constitutionalism seems to be [...]
A casual read of 'mainstream' in-ANC social media conversations amongst 'comrades' reflects a managed discontent at the decision by President Ramaphosa to give Prince Buthelezi a category one state funeral. In a veiled show of this discontent, the leader of the ANC Veterans League, Dr Snuki Zikalala, interrogates the category [...]
The death of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has triggered not only the battle for the pivot of Zulu cultural and political life, the position of the Kingdom's Premiership but also a battle for a potentially politically stranded KwaZulu-Natal abaNTU vote. The speeches at uMtwana's memorial service, which in many ways assumed [...]
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. [...]
