The th!nc Foundation

Heritage is an embodiment of a past we wish to take into our future without losing the benefits of a changing present. It defines not only a sense of belonging, it makes the past a form of the present and an abstraction of what a future will look like with us as a presence of the past which is a present we are living in now. Like its adjunct tradition, it creates and reorders our background of permanence. It assists us to transmit the merits of the past to modern-day originality.   Such a background anchors the values with which a society can be normed. The ANC conference, as the single most event that makes it possible for society to ‘rethink the dispersion of history in the form of the same’, is in itself a heritage site not only for its members but observers of how a democratic process unfolds. It will be displaying how far can the will of its members be respected and/or manipulated as well as disregarded. This display will unfortunately add a layer that sediments upon exis...

The leadership succession process in the ANC, arguably South Africa’ and Africa’s most influential political coalition by any standards, is in full swing. The nomination process by branches of the ANC, the often overrated ‘basic units’ of decision making in the ANC, is underway. Branches of the ANC are nominating from a pool of seven individuals who have ‘supposedly’ ‘accepted’ to be ‘deployed’ ‘where the ANC wants them to serve’. They have been nominated for one reason or the other with the ‘anything but Zuma’ theme taking centre stage, and propelled by outside ANC interests as abstracted in the reporting by members of the fourth estate; the press. The Jacob Zuma corruption narrative has occupied centre stage in many a discourse South African politics. State capture reports and reports on the state of capture of the state have flooded the ideational space in South Africa to levels where this concept is variously referenced on South African authors, scholars and public intellectual...

The 2016 local government elections have come and gone. The results have been released by what is arguably the most efficient elections management agency in the developing world, the IEC. Political analysts and statisticians are now grappling with the implications of the numbers and how these are reflective of the continuing South African story. In this forest of opinions, consensus on the fact that the country’s democracy is maturing has emerged. Critical in understanding this consensus will be what areas are being consolidated for the current growth path.   The South African Constitution, a growing arbiter for all matters political, provides that the country is one, sovereign, and democratic state founded on inter alia the values of universal adult suffrage, a national common voter’s roll and a multi-party system of democratic governance. These values are constitutionally entrenched in order to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness. Implicit in these values ...