The th!nc Foundation

  The IGR Template has Shifted 'In the Republic, government is constituted as national, provincial and local spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent and interrelated,' declares the South African Constitution. Officials at the national and provincial spheres of government would now agree that their IGR portion of the Constitution is served, courtesy of the 1st November 2021 elections outcome. The relationship between governments at municipal, provincial, and national spheres have changed, and transacting would require interactions that respect the various political mandates. The coming 5 years will, in local government, begin a decade of consensus and compromise for the sake of service delivery. Irrespective of what strategies the centre of government puts in place, the tension and competition with government in spheres where it is not the governing party will intensify; it is inevitable. Fortunately the Constitution drafters envisaged this eventuality and pr...

The colonial history that defined South Africa remains one of the permanent watermarks in any analysis of whatever democratic order it ultimately settles with. The structural foundations of its state formation process are a further background of permanence for any concert of reforms and reconceptualisations of all arguments defining democraticness in South Africa. The basis of creating a state is, in most instances, inextricably linked to the economic purposes of the dominant at the time the State was formed. It is in the details of such purposes where the potential or otherwise of a democracy lies. The 1994 democratic breakthrough that created a Constituent Assembly, negotiated and drafted a Constitution could only emerge with a state that had to negotiate its co-existence with apartheid-colonial power rather than fundamentally overturning it. The 'non-racialisation' of 'human enfranchisation' to include the African majority, and as a process to legitimise a negotiat...

The psychology of oppression is devastating, to say the least, to the oppressed. Steve Biko centred his understanding and explanation of oppression to the mind of the oppressed, concluding that the weapon in the hands of the oppressed to free themselves is to free their mind. It would seem that the oppressed people, after years of toil, suffering and humiliation, learn to accept the superiority of their oppressor and find enemies among themselves. When the struggle seems insurmountable they redirect their anger against their own, whilst making peace with the oppressor. This, they do, whilst professing love of their people, a commitment to struggle and freedom for the masses. The issues raised by the former Black Consciousness leader and activist, former chairman of the African National Congress (ANC), former defense minister of the republic of South Africa (SA) and the current leader of Congress of the People (COPE), Mosiuoa “Terror” Lekota, against the president of the republic...

The 54 th ANC National Conference in NASREC was not only watershed in its decisiveness to liquidate slate politics in favour of unity, but also about the introduction of a new ‘post-liberation’ order for South Africa. The ANC led liberation struggle narrative which remains instructional to most of the ANC’s ideational postures on public policy has had its fair share of creating a restitutive paradigm of governance, that was merely trying to coexist with apartheid colonial power rather than fundamentally overturning it. The stealth of colonial power, which is hegemonic in all matters policy change, has since became the vector of analysis on any process that seeks to universalise the objects of a South Africa free of apartheid colonialism and its vestiges. The survival of ‘the established’ most of whom are   non-blacks, procures from South Africa’s leadership a resolve to create a coalition of equal opportunity creation that does not guarantee outcomes but participation. The 100 ...