Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. From all of us at the Thinc Foundation. 

      In August 2022, I wrote, "The ANC tradition connotes a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attitudes about the nature of the movement, the role of the ANC in society and the polity, the authentic organization and operation of the human emancipation system it represents, about the way [...]

  Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, one of the ANC's Presidential candidates at its 55th National Conference, voted against the party's marching orders. In doing so, she invoked one of the sacred statements by ANC members when acting within the most principled of its many realms. She declared that her yes vote for [...]

     The incapacity to withstand rebuttal from branches of the ANC to lead it has introduced a new breed of politicking. Why is it that questions of who is this are asked of comrades that served it at almost every conceivable level, but an elected position is all of [...]

       Among the emerging narratives and takeaways about the upcoming ANC 55th National Conference is the growing distinction between members of the ANC, who are its guardians and those that are its custodians. To keep an organisation under custodianship is not the same as giving it the guardianship [...]

    The ANC is in a leadership contest. Leaders are deep inside an election campaign. The contest's theme is the ANC's renewal, rebuilding, and unity. In pursuit of the theme and their leadership ambitions, contesting leaders have, by default, become magnets of one coalition/faction or another inside the ANC. Interesting [...]

    In times of political upheavals and uncertainty, few countries have weathered what South Africa has gone through without an entire combat war. Despite our clearly diverse and muted demographic makeup in race, class, and tribal terms, there has always been a way we would choose for the greater good [...]

 "We have concluded that whilst there is a prima facie case of corruption against the deputy president, our prospects of success are not strong enough... we are not sure if we have a winnable case. Accordingly, we have decided not to prosecute the deputy president", declared the head of the [...]

 "Heritage is an embodiment of a past we wish to take into our future without losing the benefits of a changing present. It defines not only a sense of belonging, but it also makes the past a form of the present and an abstraction of what a future will look [...]

   To believe that the 1994 democratic breakthrough dealt with all African Claims (imvo za bantu) but enfranchisement would be a colossal understatement. Economic freedom has been illusory despite the equal opportunities declarations enshrined in the Constitution. As a critical national grievance, restitution of capital, land, in particular, has been [...]