WHILE I admired former President Nelson Mandela for offering to only stay in power for one term, then resign, and for honouring that pledge – a first in Africa, perhaps even in the world – I’m still of the view that his departure from office was premature. There are reasons for which it was a [...]
THE ten years of a Zuma presidency have given us ample opportunities to identify the weaknesses we must strengthen in our democratic institutions, to make sure that its spectre never again returns to haunt us. The sentencing of Vicki Momberg to prison for crimen injuria has placed the spotlight on the festering racial fissures that [...]
The processes under way to understand the reach of the horrors visited upon South Africa by the past 10 years of Jacob Zuma’s leadership – for lack of a better word – will continue for many months, perhaps even several years, before a full report of the damage and the role of each enabler will [...]
GIVEN the length of time it has taken the ANC’s highest decision-making structure, its national executive committee (NEC), to recall President Jacob Zuma, it is clear that there is either a loud and vociferous minority of Zuma defenders who still agree with his repeated claim that he has done nothing wrong - despite all the [...]
SOMEONE I know, a senior employee in a government owned entity, said this during a recent dinner conversation: "The biggest mistake we made at the dawn of our democracy was to iconise Nelson Mandela by placing him at the centre of everything South African, as if this country would be nothing without him. "We got [...]