The th!nc Foundation

The success or failure of a civilisation is not only a function of how innovative a society is, but how that society preserve what it already has by innovating towards sustainability. In this rendition an argument will be posited that as a society and country, South Africa has innovated one of the most enviable constitutional dispensation whose risk has now become its maintenance. The maintenance deficit, manifest in the physical infrastructure is in fact an outcome of a bigger deficit in how we think of maintaining the democracy itself. In facile terms, maintenance is described as 'the process of preserving a condition'. It is a concept that is generally applied in contexts of physical maintenance of infrastructure, notably building and the physical facilities with utility importance to humanity. In fact, and at a technical level, 'it involves functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, building infrastructure, and supporting'....

The South African Constitution establishes municipalities for the whole of the territory of South Africa. Through this it has made 'democratic and accountable government to the community' provided by local government accessible to 'all who live' in South Africa. The experience of government is felt through local government, and municipalities in particular. In respect of development planning, the integrated development planning process, a domain of municipal government, is positioned as the base plan upon which the whole of state planning is supposed to be anchored. In regional terms, the 52 municipal jurisdictions constitutive of the whole of the territory of South Africa, provide nodal points through which intergovernmental relations, integrated development planning, and non-state stakeholder engagement on development could be harnessed as an opportunity to make government work and stable. Out of these nodes, government can; ensure the provision of services to communi...

Democracy is supposed to be the arrangements with which society has agreed to govern itself. These arrangements are codified into laws and regulations through which society reconciles the conflicting interests of the individual members of society. How these interests aggregate into an acceptable policy position, generally coded as law, is a function of coalition building, creating and sometimes manipulation. Historically the will of the dominant coalition was imposed through wars, conquest and/or force of traditional acceptance of some as royalty. These mechanisms of will imposition have for centuries been undergoing constant review as the locus of political power shifts in societies. When military power was the arbiter of conflicting interests, political power got located on the proverbial 'king's table'. As the choices of humanity became the new arbiter, those they agreed to select from amongst themselves carried the collective will of all, and political power 'reloca...

The ANC showing in the 2016 Municipal Elections results represents its most visible repudiation by urban voters that cared to go to the polls. It redefined the political control and management of municipal budgets in South Africa's major metropolitan areas. It put on the sharp end of any analysis tool the continued or otherwise hegemony of the ANC as the nexus of political life in South Africa. The loss of Tshwane Metro to a DA led opposition coalition or arrangement, meant the capital city of Africa's most advanced democracy could only be a flagship of the vibrancy    of the inherent democratic nature of the country's constitutional choices. As though this was not enough, the loss of the country's economic hub, Joburg, and the 'home of most' liberation struggle personalities, Nelson Mandela Bay, sounded a different warning, a cradle of political disintegration. If we factor in the delicate coalition at Africa's manufacturing hub, Ekhurhuleni, the political ...

Dictatorships do not come as once off events, they are a gradual process. The story of the proverbial frog in a cooking pot explains the gradualism associated with how a dictatorship settles in. My grandfather was the first person to tell me the story. Later in life, and after reading more about the cold bloodedness of frogs, I understood why the frog enjoyed the water temperature until it started cooking it. I also understood why the frog was trusting to the one cooking it, because, and indeed, the frog was taken out of cold water and the frog needed some warmth.  In the theory of dictatorship we learn that dictatorships are easily embraced in societies  whose propaganda machinery has ONLY ONE narrative  whose history includes a media hyped socialisation to justify the erosion of rights by the powers that be, mostly the 'establishment'. whose leadership has an abundance of benevolence and social approval to an opiate and/or personality cult level that are blindly believi...

The generation of leaders that Tambo and Mandela led into the opportunity desert that South Africa was, seem to have or is collapsing into despair and panic over and over in moments of crises. Broken by encumbrances they carry in the system, and as an establishment, including shocking revelations of what some amongst them have contributed in the corruption cesspool engulfing our moral fibre, they seem incapable of breaking free of improvidence, cowardice, factionalism, and nostalgic worship of their struggle credentials.  Some of them are the once celebrated  'Mandela mandarins' that have crafted the liberal democratic order we are supposedly stuck in its quicksandy  patches They are the men and women who may be sitting with 'how-to-manuals' written in a grammar our liberation vocabulary cannot navigate through, some have crossed the proverbial Jordan in respect of a better life for all, some are suffocating in the race to jump at all costs. In their at all costs pursui...

I n a world full of uncertainties and deceit, friendship becomes what is available to bring sanity. We often find ourselves in situations where there is always a need to make a choice between what is good for our selfish joy or better for our collective happiness. The self is often the one everyone expects to give in for the us. It is only the mentally empowered and those whose locus of control is within them that will understand the importance of working on the self and not us. Because life is lived through friendships and partnerships, its burdens will always come from the loss or gain of these. Of cardinal importance is the Friendship with your Creator who gives direction to all other relationships the world is to offer. All humans, and because they are creatures of one Creator, have a relationship only they can explain with the creator. The tendency to socialise the relationship man has with his Creator, has led to some believing they have a monopoly of wisdom about what the creato...

T he appointment of Job Mokgoro as Premier of the North West was argued by a Ramaphosa Cabinet to be as a result of a need ‘to restore trust and confidence between labour and government’; ‘assist the province to upgrade its systems and capabilities to a normality’; ‘ensure compliance with the legislative and regulatory framework of government’; ‘stabilise the labour environment’; ‘restore sustainable service delivery’; ‘ensure security of staff’ and ‘improve financial management’.   Mokgoro was 'installed' as Premier in terms of section 100 of the Constitution. Section 100 is one of the instruments to facilitate ‘national supervision of intervention in provincial administration’ in the circumstance ‘a province cannot or does not fulfil an executive obligation in terms of the Constitution or legislation’. Such intervention is thus premised on the performance of the provincial administration and not the ‘politics’ instructing to the system.  The invoking of section 100 is in fac...

  Living in a society that has dramatic moments ranging from racism, tribalism, xenophobia, economic exclusion, religious chauvinism, and many 'othering' human tendencies imposes a responsibility on the conscientious to act as who they are. In a country where the existence of these chauvinisms is an outcome of previously legislated intents by one of the world's state resources endowed human relations engineering project, apartheid, this becomes a perennial program of note. The ends of social engineering were of such a focus that the means to get there normalised into correctness chauvinisms and out of norm behaviour by organs of state, particularly in their human form and elected officials character. The testimony or submission by President Ramaphosa at the Commission on State Capture, however plausible its intents were, revealed the power of the pursuit of power to delay and/or freeze the extent to which normative decisions can be taken by the politically ambitious. In ack...

The advent of technology progressively challenging the need for humans in the performance of mundane tasks is a reality that has not only impacted the necessity of humans in certain of production functions, but their necessity in the delivery of 'public services'.   In a 1997 strategic planning workshop of the department of Home Affairs in South Africa, this breaking the ice question was asked to the then senior leadership, "if President Nelson Mandela were to announce the closure of the department of Home Affairs, what would you tell him as reasons not to close the department". The aim of the facilitator was to derive the purpose objectives of the department, what defined it's right of existence. The question was asked at a time being 'deployed' in the public service was a prestigious career move for new black bureaucrats that have just been employed as the 'post-apartheid mind of the new South African State'.  The capacity to think of the state w...

As the country is deep in celebrating women's month, it will also be putting names and faces to the women we are specifically celebrating. Some of the women are age equivalents of our parents, grand or otherwise. I am writing this to venerate women that had a profound impact on my life, and celebrate those that still have an impact. My Mother, Ausi Martha Mathebula  Born a Mashigo, of two Mashigo cousins in Bushbuckridge, and later settled in Alexandra until moved to SOWETO's Central Western Jabavu. Ausi Martha was blessed with five children of which I am the second son of his marriage with Gitsha Mathebula.  She was a daughter of an entrepreneur father, Matthews Mashigo. Her father owned a distribution enterprise that linked Thabazimbi Orange Farms, Hartebees Peach Farms, The Maize Triangle Corn Farms, and the Johannesburg Fresh Produce's commodities with retailers in Soweto. It was this entrepreneurial zeal that defined the Ausi Martha I knew as my mother. She was a seams...