The th!nc Foundation

In a conversation between Blessing Mphela and Squire Mahlangu about the State of the ANC, a number of insights emerged. These indicated the expanding dearth of an organisation that might be living in the shadow of its glorious past. An organisation that might be feeding itself off its own, it might be cannibalising the skill full within its ranks, or rather ignoring the wealth of past experience it has shelved for reasons not yet revealed. Here under is an answer to a question by Squire Mahlangu (SQ) to Blessing Mphela (BM). SQ: "We used to elect leadership on the basis of commitment to the struggle. Now we elect on the basis of what's in it for me" Blessing Mphela retorts: "Yes Cde Squire we used to. You would remember that even during the early period of struggle there was emphasis on administrative skills training...We produced our own propaganda material, banners and newspapers. Pretoria had the Eye which was run by Cde Titus Mafolo and Kgaugelo Lekgoro.  We had ...

In his first speech to Parliament in 1994, 'multi-racial' South Africa's First President, Nelson Mandela, dedicated few seconds to deal with fundamental symbols of abaNTU subjugation that continue to exist to date. In his speech he said "We must end racism in the workplace as part of our common offensive against racism in general. No more should words like Kaffirs, Hottentots, Coolies, Boy, Girl and Baas be part of our vocabulary". His choice of 'workplace' might have been his view of society from the prism of abaNTU, that it is a 'workplace' to them more than a 'country of birth', or its main productive areas sees them as visiting workers from 'homelands', and thus 'workers'. Their citizenship, though restored to 'vote' is still reliant on an ability to get an 'employee' number or 'section 10' stamp of a special type, in this our 'dual economy' State. Whilst it is equally important to reflect...

O death with your dearth You birth sorrows with arrow precision You collect the best amongst us You rest the wanted as you leave the rest You still steal as we still expect more You create centers of interaction out of sorrow Yes you are death and you dearth discourses As we see you we know we will miss some As you miss the useless you make us miss the useful As you remove spokespersons you become a graveyard spokesperson You unite in sorrow for you killed joy already A tributary of ending friendships you became An opportunity for tributes to angelize you create As you pass countries lose their best As you settle the remaining best contest to know you Corpses become celebrities as legacies turn into monuments Yes you create statues at graveyards and love statues to the bereaved   As for us of the liberation movement You presence moved us to the other life At your altar we continue our hegemonic battles At your alter we factionalize the dead We attack the living, we institutionalize...

The African National Congress, arguably the nexus of all political life in South Africa, is in the midst of a demand by history for one of its most consequential review since its formation. History has bestowed on its entire existence the obligation to be a leader of society in a vortex of competing interests. How the ANC structured itself to execute the anti-colonial cannot be the same as how it structures itself to be a governing party. As the nexus of politics instructing to public policy, the efficiencies within the ANC will always be determining on the stability or otherwise of South Africa as a democracy. Whilst the CODESA outcome came with a Liberal Democratic Construct undergirded by the Rule of Law, the post-liberation rhetoric within the ANC has not matched the exigencies of a Constitutional Democracy. The normative guidelines imposed by the Constitution on the public administration system are of a liberal democratic nature, and the ideological prerogatives of the governing p...

The events that followed the incarceration of Jacob Zuma are continuing to raise more questions than answers as the governing centre tries to have a relationship with the truth or otherwise behind the causes. The emerging consensus seems to be about finding a mast upon which those events can be pinned, and by extension a body of persons to stick the blame to. What we as South Africans may not be interrogating is the extent to which the governing party has capacity to muster the hard power of the state to rain in on the criminality that characterised the events. The African National Congress has a definite history of relying on soft power to advance its objectives. Since its inception in 1912 the ANC has been a organisation that is reliant on its persuasive prowess to conduct the struggle. It has declared itself, on many occasions, as a non-violent organisation. Deputations to those in power defined its many epochs. In conditions of extreme pressure and frustration, the ANC would rather...

There is an interesting, and yet revealing, debate or discourse which is concretising the fault lines of the divisions at the core of our constitutional democracy. Cabinet, the apex institution embedding our national executive authority is sending different messages of what happened in the aftermath of Jacob Zuma's arrest. If the beginning of wisdom is indeed the naming of things right, there are definitely two strands of wisdom in the characterisation of the immediate post-Zuma arrest events. In psychology there is a now developed field explaining human behaviour, including performance, called neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). NLP claims that how we communicate or characterise situations is determining on our response to what we see. It claims that naming of events and situations define the basis of our entire relationship with such. In a rendition on the importance of concepts, Steven Moudley argues that conceptual understanding better equips humanity to participate in its worl...

In 1997/98 or thereabout, former President Thabo Mbeki warned (and I may be paraphrasing him): “When the poor rise, they’ll rise against us all.”  I wrote an editorial comment about his statement in Tribute magazine, stating that it will take the people of Alex (a symbol of poverty and squalor) a few minutes to cross over the M1 and reduce Sandton (the richest square mile in Africa) to ashes. Zizi might not have known then what the trigger of the poor rising would be. But he was on the money. We do need to address poverty and inequality, and urgently so. And we must not shy away from the racialised nature of these problems. They do have a largely black face.  IN 2003, addressing a Black Management Forum conference in Cape Town, Mbeki continued with his diagnosis. He said South Africa effectively had two economies - the one white and the other black. He used a double-storey house as a metaphor for the South African economy, saying what made ours strange and ugly is that it had ...

The hands that gave life to many have gone numb. The body whose skill revived countless hearts to beat loudly has frozen. The voice that shouted order to take the struggle for freedom to higher levels has muted. A glorious spirit that defined the life of Dr Abbey Nkomo, ‘the people’s doctor’, has departed; the sun that warmed and brightened many lives has set. During this difficult period, when real expertise is needed, as many people face the invisible and silent pandemic – the coronavirus – it callously attacked the best among us and one who had been our protector for a long time. Dr Nkomo departs when the authentic leadership is needed as the country solely seeks such wisdom; when the youth are faced with the prospects of a bleak existence because of the rising unemployment and the ever gaping distance between the rich and the poor; when there is a greater need for the leadership of the caliber of Dr Nkomo so as to defeat the wretchedness of many of our people such that none shoul...

In his poem, What Economy am I, a South African Poet writes, My Produce feeds me less, and feeds others for less, In my quest to feed self, I become a mess, Policies about me are made far away from me, My greatness is when others become greater, What economy am I? Let me thank the NSBE for the opportunity to speak about engineering when I am not an engineer in the literal sense of the word. I was asked to speak on ‘the role of the NSBE in the socio-economic transformation of South Africa’. In considering this request I asked myself the following questions 1.      Why the role of the NSBE and not engineering or engineers 2.      If it is the latter, what then is engineering?  3.      Why socio-economic transformation and not economic transformation?    I asked myself this question because I wanted to approach this topic like an engineer. You would agree with me that a 'good engineer 'is one t...