The th!nc Foundation

In her answer to a question by a Rapport journalist on naming the people she does not like Annelie Botes responded “I am now going to be terribly honest. And let it shock this country. I do not like black people. I don't understand them ... I know they are people like me, I know they have the same rights as me. But I do not understand them. And then ... I don't like them. I avoid them, because I am afraid of them”. It is in the honesty of the answer Annelie gave that has made her become a focus of scorn, and interestingly, outside the context of the racially polarised firmament that instructs all manner of discourse in this country. We have once again chosen to see in her comment our past, whilst going past our present. If diversity is a keynote of social condition and opinion, it is therefore becoming increasingly dangerous for us as a nation to create a context of analysing the response of Ms Botes outside our various elements of this keynote. In her response it is clear tha...

Families are engineered units of society, mothers are engineers Foundations of civilisations, present and future The engineer of my family, a shepherd of my children’s souls, A blacksmith of their character, a moulder of their personality The needle finder in darkness, the stitch maker in cases of torn coverings Designer of ingredients for the cake of joy, a sauce to our dinner table discussions The general manager of all family secrets, the secret manager of generations The emotional diplomat of repute yet the reputational risk of diplomacy The cushion for all heads, the headless cushion for all challenges The lover of all homely odours, the odour of love for all homes The finder of all things lost, the loser of all things found Her love makes any winter to be summer, her tenderness mock the dawns of spring Her spirit creates warmth in all corners; all corners have her as the ultimate spirit She is the mama of all, and the all to mamas..the cycle never ends. Loving is what makes you a...

In his announcement of the latest Cabinet reshuffle President Zuma created an operative paradigm that informed and/or informs his governmenr and/or governance approach. He again declared that his administration is based on the ideas, views and policy injunctions of men and women who "know where our people live". In his book "do South Africans Exist" Ivor Chipkins quotes Chantal Mouffe that "democracy always entails relations of inclusion -exclusion that speak to a notion of the political frontier". The political frontier of South Africa has been most fluid when it attempts to define 'the people' as objects of political legitimisation processes. The 'people' remains a critical concept in the definition of 'who is a South African and who is not' and very much in the dichotomous Mouffe inclusion and exclusion discourse. President Zuma's reference to the 'people' with the criteria of where they live calls therefore for the i...

Portrayer of social phenomenon, separator of class Distinguisher of orientations, extinguisher of opposite mindsets Setter of collective thought, respecter of individual rebellion You define what society sees not, yet you see what society cannot define Meanderings of power are concentrated in your collections Collectors delineate what you will be worth and mean In passages of power you institutionalise ideology and culture In ideological passages you define power relations Your survival is but a question of affordability and promotion Generations die and yet you revive them into the present You are capital to the rich, and the capital of the poor Social cohesion capitalises you, economic coercion recapitalises your character Wall silence gets broken once you are hung, yet you hang wall makers Aesthetics cope with your impositions whilst you impose cultural hope Fortune is painted through your many dots and curves Every time you appear you dispense harmonious melody Born by imaginations...

In his article on ‘sniffing out racial intolerance in campuses; Mail and Guardian, 13 August 2010’ Professor Jansen make observations that do not only require a response but need further elucidation. In the article mention is made of ‘an accusatory tone of public discourse that works to further separate ordinary black and white from coming together”. Whilst the above assertion has merit, it is in Professor Jansen’s admission “I know from experience that racial attitudes are not only carried in words but also communicated in other ways”, that the issue of ‘subliminal racism’ in the protected space of academics needs to be understood. The position of academic institutions and the instruments of knowledge generation and dissemination such as academic journals should not be underestimated in the national assignment of redefining the historic stereotypes about intellectualism. Academic institutions as repositories of knowledge and the recorded memory of a country’s future should at all ti...

The FIFA 2010 World Cup hosting by South Africa will go into history as an event that redefined the essence of being South African. The pre-June 11 preparations were to most of us seen within the prism of infrastructure and team readiness rather than national readiness. The built-up games that characterised our view of the national team and SAFA may have blinded us to see the national reawakening that was taking place as we approached the kick-off day. Our preparations were punctuated, as though it was through some divine and supernatural design, by the gladiatorial success of the Blue Bulls and the Stormers to host the all African super 14 final at Orlando Stadium. The significance of the rugby finals featuring a team that is a compulsory footnote in the history of South African Rugby became an announcement to the world that South Africa is not only technically ready but emotionally prepared. It will not be a surprise if some of the Blue Bulls fans that went to Orlando stadium were la...

The subject of political correctness is probably politically incorrect in itself. South Africa has a racial past that is toxic to all manner of discourse on any aspect of our co-existence as humans. The reasons for this toxicity can be traced to our developmental path as a nation that continues to entrench its race and ethnic based nationalism. The degree, to which we as a society are ready to confront our nationalist pasts and make them congruent to the rainbowism we are purporting to build, will be determinate on how politically correct or otherwise our discourse can be. In South Africa political correctness is directly linked to the race relations sub-context that society is avoiding to tackle. The absence of a platform or arena where ideas on how to neutralise the race based tensions that South Africans have to contend with on a daily basis make the nation-building assignment illusive for a number of reasons. Firstly, the South African nation-building project is more subjective and...

The intergovernmental relations challenge of the Zuma administration is snowballing into a cooperation quagmire that requires political maturity similar to the pre-1994 democratic breakthrough elections. The political grandstanding of party leaders and spokespersons can only polarise the environment with grass and elephant consequences for the electorate. The need to understand the nature of these relations outside 2009 electoral mandates and 2011 local government electioneering contexts becomes critical for those charged with the responsibility to govern. The wish by a DA-led Western Cape administration to operate as though provinces have a defined role in the National Executive should either be toned down, or a reality check on the extent to which a provincial administration can dent the direction of the National Executive be made. The strategic references to the Republic’s central government as the federal government can only recreate the federal-unitary state debate that charact...

This was written on invitation from LitNet. The edited version was published by The Sunday Independent on April 11, 2010. The ‘death’, ‘murder’ and/or ‘killing’ of Eugene Tereblanche will continue to court controversy, scorn and political grand standing for a foreseeable future. The central role this incident will be playing in the emerging race-charged political discourse with its famous epicentre being Julius Malema cannot be underestimated irrespective of what the political pundits want us to believe. It is the accompanying silences (especially those of class, race and gender) to the discourse that South Africa should take a stand to be both loud and path finding in terms of dealing with its racial past. The era of race-transcending leadership (that is leadership that never forgets about the significance of race but refuses to be confined to its demonic dictates as manifest in blatant discrimination and dispossession of man’s only valuable asset; humanity) did not begin and end with...

South African history is being rewritten, given new appendices, and/or is in a continuous state of redefining itself. Unfortunately, The process is muddied by the various historical contributions of the country’s nationals, especially in defining who the victors are in the broad anti-colonial struggle. The contestation for this position has fortunately escaped the wrath of being a political mobilisation rallying point, notwithstanding its appearance in a sideshow discourse often led by the politically naive and uninformed. Although the Nelson Mandela-sponsored reconciliation path as evidenced in the CODESA negotiations and the 1994 government of national unity arrangements, the often underplayed reason for the maturing political ‘toenadering’ amongst South Africans is that of an unwritten anti-colonial pact between the dominant ‘white tribe of South Africa and the post-1994 political elite. It is not a coincidence that the primary reference point for South Africa’s political history i...

It is my pleasure to be invited to this conference. I have been asking myself what qualifies me to be the keynote speaker. In my quest to find the correct answer, because I know there are many another incorrect answers, I stumbled on the fact that I like controversy. Controversy is to an academic what a forest is to adventures. The conference invite opened with the following words with the changing political landscape in South Africa a new phenomenon dubbed “service delivery protests”, which appears analogous to the pre-1994 “protests against apartheid”, is emerging and is beginning to dominate the public intellectual space’. Whilst I thought it is over it went on to say ‘This phenomenon is becoming ubiquitous aspect of our changing political landscape’, and this is where I knew the crux of the conspiracy is. However I was neutralised by the fact that two critical questions were then asked, and these are; • Are our institutional architecture and policy framework appropriately geared to...