The th!nc Foundation

     The outcomes of the November 2021 Municipal Elections, unprecedented as they have been and still are, might have brought to an end the transformation rhetoric as a currency of the South African voter market. When the fourth decade since Nelson Mandela was released began, relations between South Africans were essentially closer to a level they had been before 1990. A divided society along race identifiable inequality contours, a declined role of the liberation complex as a leader of society, a rise of non-racial economic right thinking cognitive elite, a governing party that has hollowed out its support base through 'reported' acts of voter confidence liquidation practices such as state capture and corruption, a rise of an opposition complex with a perceived racio-liberal mindset hellbent on undoing post-apartheid gains that have accrued to the non-white, and mainly African majority, and a populace that has assumed a central stage in the public power mandating contest...

     “Just call me Arch”, read the inscriptions on the t-shirts he wore during defiance campaigns when he was not in his famous pink cassock. He was the people’s bishop who was always in the frontline. He took a stand against apartheid when he left teaching as a protest when the National Party (NP) government introduced key pillars of the apartheid system, namely, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949), Population Registration Act (1950), Group Areas Act (1950) and Bantu Education Act (1953). He became a leading opponent of the apartheid rule as a leader of the South African Council of Churches (SACC), which had declared: “unity of all people is the will of God and that separation is the most complete refusal of the truth”. They challenged apartheid apologists who were combing through the bible to find its justification as a supposed will of God. He participated in mass mobilization and building international solidarity, whilst giving practical and moral support to...

     One of the readings that I visited as part of the project I am currently busy with is Professor Mahmood Mamdani’s book ‘Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities’ (2020). The book helps one navigate some of the complex questions that confront us today, What the hack is customary law?  What gave birth to a homeland system that was dominated by a single tribe whereas many of the places that became Bantustans had more than one group residing there? What exactly is this nonsense called ‘traditional authority’ that the likes of CONTRALESA today defend with their lives? Understanding colonial/ apartheid using the single-state and two-state prisms: Why does it appear that some people in South Africa are destined to retain the peripheral status and others reap the benefits of full citizenship?  In the book, Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe—from the N...

    As we reminiscence on the closing of the curtain by a cohort of leadership in our country and the World, we are saddened to hear about the passing on of one of Africa’s epitome of leadership, Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the former Archbishop of the Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa. One of the four Nobel Peace Price Laureates that define the towering peaceful nature of our country and its people. A pioneer of peace and reconciliation, a committed believer in the freedom of both the oppressed and the oppressor as a condition for peace. A priest of the Word of God, a father to his family, a loving husband to his wife Mama Leah, and an intercessor to many a nation and great leaders. In the ilk of  Chief  Albert Luthuli,  Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Boutros Boutros Ghali, Salim Salim, The Dalai Lama, Mwalimu Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Ntate Masire, Kenneth Kaunda, Samora Machel, Oliver Tambo, Jomo Kenyatta, FW de Klerk, Thabo M...

   The Covid-19 pandemic has wrecked havoc to many a human system and ways of life that humanity will emerge beyond it with new behaviours and an altered civilisation. The greatest of human socialisation institutions where norms, values, and mores are transmitted to each other and modelled for the next generation and posterity, are undergoing several redefinitions. One of the most affected is the institution of worshipping together; the Church, as we know it. Generally humanity has seen church as a physical place or space of worship, in fact it has traditionally been associated with a building where people of a particular religion, and mostly Christian, go to worship. In Biblical terms, the departure point of this rendition, the church is more than just a building or a physical space, but all about people and the spiritual well being anchored on their relationship with God.  Being about people might also be a misnomer in that the church might, and strictly speaking, be re...

   The Constitution of South Africa directs that 'in  the Republic, government is constituted as national, provincial, and local spheres of government which are distinctive, interdependent, and interrelated. All spheres of government and all organs of state within each sphere must observe and adhere to principles of co-operative government'. Amongst others these principles obligate organs of state to 'respect the constitutional status, institutions, powers and functions of  government in the other spheres, not assume any power or function except those conferred on them in terms of  the Constitution; exercise their powers and perform their functions in a manner that does not encroach on the geographical, functional or institutional integrity of  government in another sphere. This would include co-operating with one another in mutual trust and good faith by, (i) fostering friendly relations; (ii) assisting and supporting one another; (iii) informing one anoth...

     The stability of an order is a function of how integrated or complementary its political elite is. Elite consensus on basic values that should undergird a society is as much a prerequisite for a high performance political system as it is a potential guarantor for unresponsive and oligarchic government. Either way, the common denominator is a society's political elite and the arrangements they would have made to create stability that would not disrupt the status quo to the extent that it facilitates predominance of their interests. We often hear of things that 'fall apart', in South Africa, the structure of its elite is very much a 'things (interests) come from apart'. It is in fact a cocktail of what 'apart-heid' had set apart, and yet finding a common reason to co-exist without perpetuating     the grand objects of 'apart-heid'. In this rendition an attempt will be made to demonstrate that beyond race as a vector to most of South African politi...