The th!nc Foundation

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...