The th!nc Foundation

This was written on the 20 July 2009 The recent pronouncements on Co-operative government have resuscitated the almost buried debate on the nature of our governance system as it relates to the powers and functions of sub-national governments and the concomitant intergovernmental relations system. Whilst the current igniters seem to be focussed on the local government capacity related issues, it is the long term management of South Africa’s democracy issues that are igniting an inquest into the real intents of the emerging centralisation tendency. The South African constitution establishes South Africa as one sovereign democratic state founded on values that include the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law as well as a multi-party system of democratic governance. The constitution further constitutes government as national, provincial and local spheres that are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated. The mere mention and practice of political representation determined ...

This edited version of this article was published by the CITY PRESS: 10 May 2009 The 2009 national elections results have not only redefined the South African political landscape but also laid the basis for the fracturing of existing paradigms of intergovernmental relations. The intergovernmental relations honeymoon that was ‘oiled’ by an almost monolithic governance script determined through intra-party dealings appears to have waned with the queues that renewed current political mandates. The political arrangements yielded by the provincial ruling/opposition party dichotomy are now poised to create an intergovernmental relations excitement never seen and experienced in our shores. The resuscitation of ‘fight back’, ‘rooi-gevaar’ and potentially ‘swaart gevaar’ through euphemisms like ‘stop Zuma’ and ‘the two thirds majority scare’ are now part of our 2009 elections sloganeering history. The degree to which these have defined the character of our opposition politics and by extension t...

This was written on the 30 April 2009 Did the Jacob Zuma ANC victory either expose an apparent dearth of rational discourse in our democracy or reignited the discourse. Rational debates are by their nature expected to assume a scientifically justifiable objectivity; particularly in the often muddy political theatre. The importance of academicians as a supposed repository of proven knowledge and previously recorded best practise as well as the initiation-cum-generation of new knowledge has been sharpened by the ‘psychological two-thirds’ majority Jacob Zuma ANC victory. The noticeable rise in significance of specialists, experts and political analysts during this saga can be attributed to a myriad of reasons. Central to all these is the need to provide an answer to what most political scientists are unable to provide an answer for. The seemingly unanswerable question of what makes the majority of our voting population to continue supporting the ANC and by extension its president Jacob Z...