The th!nc Foundation

Freedom celebration is an important aspect of nation building that cannot be left only to annual Union Buildings festivities, but should be deliberately weaved as a national project. The ‘dual’ history of South Africa often characterised as white and black history compounds the quest for a national meaning of freedom. Understanding the meaning of freedom in South Africa is fast becoming an elusive project for the organised political coalitions, unless if they act in their capacity as government, albeit with a profoundly underperforming sub-context Post 1994 government has, through its constitutional and legislative provisions, occupied the historically battered role of shaping a ‘non-racial’ South African nation. Despite Constitution’s instruct to ‘adopt the Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights’, the practical task of building a ‘South Afr...

Freedom celebration is an important aspect of nation building that cannot be left only to annual Union Buildings festivities, but should be deliberately weaved as a national project. The ‘dual’ history of South Africa often characterised as white and black history compounds the quest for a national meaning of freedom. Understanding the meaning of freedom in South Africa is fast becoming an elusive project for the organised political coalitions, unless if they act in their capacity as government, albeit with a profoundly underperforming sub-context Post 1994 government has, through its constitutional and legislative provisions, occupied the historically battered role of shaping a ‘non-racial’ South African nation. Despite Constitution’s instruct to ‘adopt the Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights’, the practical task of building a ‘South Afr...

In one of his seminal speeches Martin Luther King Jnr warns society that “in the end, we will remember not the words (or noises) of our enemies, but the silences of our friends”. The ascendance of Mr Julius Malema to what is arguably the most powerful position to be held by a young adult in South Africa has attracted noises and silences that only history will tell of their animosity or friendliness. In whatever manner the answer turns out to be, Mr Malema has entrenched himself as both a legitimate leader of a sizeable section of South Africa’s youth and a political phenomenon available for intellectual inquest. As a youth leader Mr Malema represented the biggest organised youth constituency in the developing world. According to the ANCYL conference attendance procedures, every delegate that graced the conference in a representative capacity commanded 50 registered members of the Youth League. The … conference has been reported to have had 5300 delegates; this translates to 265 000 m...