The th!nc Foundation

  "We must urgently finalize the social compact between the social partners to achieve our country's fundamental social transformation to reduce and eradicate the plague of unemployment, poverty, and inequality". This is the sentence in the ANC Manifesto that President Thabo Mbeki referred to in a conversation with professionals in Gauteng as part of the build-up to the November municipal elections. Commenting on this sentence, Mbeki submits that as the ANC, and after all the promises and commitments they have made, they "had to answer the question of where are the resources going to come from?" He continues to foreground the fact that the pandemic has spoken to South Africans that "we need to join hands and work together and change the situation". In this rendition, Mbeki was centering issues of the economy, its players, private capital, and investment a condition precedent to whatever promise or pledge anyone looking to lay firsthand the 'executi...

   TO MPHO A birth-date is a reminder to celebrate the life you are living as well as to update the very life. As you have again has this opportunity to meet with your birthdate, have a happy birthday my sister, amongst many.  I agree with Pholile, and want to ad that please, and please, just let 'gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good. I have learnt that a 'good relationship is anchored on being a friend to each other's mind, being able to gather each other's pieces, and giving them back to each other all in a right order. I also know that a real sister's  love and giggle becomes enough, you can only rise in such love. Happy Birthday Mpho, Sesi, Ngwana wa mmane ye mnyana wa nnamong, ke ra yela sesi ye mnyana wa mmane wa nna mong. TO GODFREY  I have an early memory of meeting a young man at the graduation of one of my brothers as he was introduced by one of ...

   As the year draws to a close, we are all looking forward to the Christmas retreat and reunion with relatives and family. Those that still have parents will be reconnecting with their source. It is times like these that throw me to the many discussions I have had with my father. A nature loving person, a great teacher through metaphors, and a sage in his own right. He would turn any discussion on nature into a teaching moment, and I realised later when the lesson manifested itself in real life experience. Most of his lessons were about being impactful without being conspicuous, being great without suffocating the capacity of others to be big in your greatness, and being simple in your complexity. Delivered through the medium of his vernacular his wisdom could draw from the indigenous philosophy captured through his impeccable relationship with nature and all its healing properties. The conversation was about the plant that covers the most ground wherever it has grown. He was...

    As political parties wrap up their final pushes towards the 1 November 2021 local government elections day, a new reality is dawning to historically bigger parties. The reality that these elections are more about containing gained ground than hoping for outright majority win in strategic urban centres defining South Africa as a regional economic powerhouse. In fact, the ideal of democracy being a 'of', 'by', and 'for' the people affair will be put to real test in these elections to condition the 2024 national and provincial elections. For a while, the arrangements that we have agreed to govern ourselves and manage the affairs of the state, otherwise referred to as a democracy, have been under stress. It is the resiliences of the rule of law, the supremacy of the constitution, and independence of the judiciary which we worked into the constitution that have come to its defence. The human element in us, had it not been the toughness of principle characteristic...

    When Man was created the Bible announces that God said ‘Let us create man in our own image’. We also learn that the Us is the Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. In the moulding of Man, the whole of God is thus the image we have been created as. We were then placed in this World, and there was always an expectation that being created in the image of God, in His wholeness we will be as whole as he is, and thus not sinful. What we have also learned is that the arch angel Lucifer is banished to this World we are placed in. As a past senior angel he knew, and understood as he still knows and understands what the Wholeness of God meant when it declared, let us create man in Our own image. Lucifer enjoyed the benefits of being God-like before he got banished. He understood that we have been created as; The Father; this means we have a leadership role over those entrusted to us to parent and partner with in his greatest institution called a family....

   Our nature as humanity includes the pursuit of power to create, change and influence our space or living conditions. This quest has overtime been found to be responsible for most of the conflicts amongst us. Our interests are what defines the need to influence and create to alter our conditions. The science of managing or reconciling those interests is called politics. It is a contestation terrain out of which the dominant interests of those that win the contest becomes the vector of all other interests. In essence this means the will of the people, or their aggregated interests as defined by coalitions they establish to pursue them, define, and in Lincolnian parlance, a 'of the people, by the people, for the people' context, also called democracy. Humanity has thus agreed to regulate these wills of the people through an electoral process which is free, fair and regular. In this process people are supposedly given a chance to select amongst 'available' options a coal...

   The task of reconstructing nations that have been in conflict is not the responsibility of the governments they form as an outcome of peace. South Africa is a post-conflict nation that has pre-peace conflict fault lines impacting on its ability to cohere around a common program to the benefit of all. The SA conflict has spatial and demographic artefacts that are constant reminders to a no-victor settlement created nation that certain of the grievances still need resolution. It is during such historical moments that society relies on institutions created within them to help in the navigation what may seem insurmountable if government as an agency of the State is unable to. The South African Constitution, an outcome of the CODESA political egg dance presided over by Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, 'delivers', through law, 'the dream' of a country with which society is enabled to 'heal divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social ...

   The 2021 Municipal Elections are in full force, and political parties are contesting for the support of South Africans in their 278 municipalities. The contest is in fact in 8 Metropolitan Municipalities, 44 District Municipalities, and 226 Local Municipalities. At a granular level the contest is for well over 4 000 municipal wards. Nothing comes this closest to negotiating a space into the political soul of the South African nation like municipal elections.   Municipal elections have in most societies been the cradle of political leadership. The content and context of South Africa's 2021 municipal elections has for the ANC become an opportunity to have a conversation with itself through messages it communicates to society. The ANC Issued a manifesto that asks society to give it a chance to continue governing as well as correcting itself into a 'leader of society' it had once been. I was invited to a conversation with professionals, academics, and business persons thro...

  I  was invited to a dinner with UNISA's Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Puleng LenkaBula. This was, I suppose, one of the stakeholder engagement processes she had embarked upon to introduce herself-in-the-office to various establishments that may or will be critical to the success or otherwise of her tenure at UNISA. The line-up of guests that were 'physically' at the dinner represented a cohort of business leaders who, and I was amongst them, dubbed as being captains of industry. Stakeholder engagement theory wisens that a coterie of individuals found at such dinners define the approval networks that a leadership tenure or cause enjoys in society. The 'physical' absence of the 'strategic' in the 'governance' architecture of UNISA, and those that have natural proximity to South Africa's political-economic establishment was to me notably worrisome. The stature that UNISA projects as an African University would have, or should have, attr...

The purpose of voting in a democracy is to, amongst others, allow voters to influence, at least, who ultimately gets to use 'public power' and ‘all that the state monopolises' to determine sovereign human destinies. In South Africa, this right to vote has been equated to the ultimate means of translating what liberation and emancipation can be. Consequently, most South African voters have a relationship with voting that speaks to their condition in ways that might undermine the power embedded in the vote. Conditions in which voters find themselves tend to influence their ability to discern reality from fiction out of what those campaigning to be voted say to them. In squalor situations, anyone who stimulates voters' hopes for a 'better life' can quickly become a source of authenticity, even if they are fakes. In these conditions, the tendency of underprivileged voters to decide to vote for a person as an act against (perceived) privilege, even if the candidate i...