The th!nc Foundation

       Upon assuming office as the fifth President of South Africa for its sixth administration, President Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation Address to Parliament announced a new service delivery approach modeled around the centrality of the District (and Metropolitan) Municipal jurisdiction as the focal space within which the sum impact of government will be seen, felt, and showcased. In introducing this model the President said     “our decision was premised on (1) efficiency, (2) cost-containment, (3) cooperative governance, and (4) strategic alignment…this is the start of a wider process of (5) arresting the decline in State capacity and (6) restructuring our model of service delivery so that it best serves the citizens of our country. We will be adopting a district-based approach – focusing on the forty-four districts and eight metros (52 municipal district jurisdictions) – to speed up service delivery, (7) ensuring that municipalities are properly ...

      The African National Congress is facing a national elective conference in December 2022. The contestations for leadership of Africa's oldest 'liberation movement' have begun, interests will define new political fiends, factional templates will change, professional lobbyists will descend on our shores, and thinking will soon start reflecting encumbrances.  In its recent history, 28 years to be exact, the ANC has sponsored the institutional structures and the patterns necessary for manufacturing a version of itself as an electing leaders party than a leader of society. This new role, which is in fact alien to what it is known to be, has displayed the egoism, arrogance, and general nastiness that we had in the past associated with liberation movements that have left their people behind. This year's conference, we hope, should be the most consequential to rogue elements that have captured its soul. The strongest theme emerging from within the ranks of the ANC is Re...

      The reality of a post-flood disaster in KwaZulu-Natal is an inevitability all of South Africa should start dealing with. The management of the disaster that befalls society is a public affairs management endeavor whose outcome redefines life, livelihoods, and their attendant faculties into posterity. The scope and reach of the flood-induced mayhem to core logistics routes of practically all South African economic nodes and destinations, its rapid human to economy relations disruptions, and how it has now made it difficult for a social compact determinative collaboration on dealing with its impact, makes it an unprecedented disaster of seismic regional proportions. As the flooding wreaks havoc on regional, national, and sub-National economies, the social fabric, and creates statewide or countrywide fear and uncertainty, it is at the same time establishing a new order of doing government and maybe disrupting our national logistics arrangements in respect of risk mitig...

      For a while, the South African thinking and ideational community has been debating, including in muted tones, whether the stubbornness of the economy to grow sufficient enough to allow new and historically excluded entrants is responsible for calls that the transformation which has happened was not as radical as expected. This conversation, which was supposed to have been given attention during a Ramaphosa presidency, was muted by the break out of the Coronavirus pandemic and the factionalism which has choke ideation within the governing party.   A wave of opposition to any attempt at concretely interrogating the structure of South Africa's political economy by 'funded' civil society movements took root. The sum impact of such an orchestration has to date been the separation of the substantive issues of 'radical economic transformation' from it being a governing party policy issue to its classification as a sponsored communication  strategy, apparently by ...

      There is a growing narrative that the recent conferences of the ANC, notably the Mpumalanga provincial and the eThekwini regional conferences signal a shift in support for Ramaphosa, this blog piece argues there are in fact shifts in his favour than many would notice. However, this narrative might be enjoying the benefit of a precedence set in the immediate past national elective conference of the ANC where eThekwini became the primal launching pad of the NDZ17 campaign and the Mpumalanga Province's 'unity vote' tipping the scales in favor of a 'unity of the irreconcilable slate' of tense factions predominant in the current ANC leadership. The narrative's theory is premised on the assumption that the Mpumalanga vote, that has a now absent DD Mabuza iron influence, will command the king maker status it has. What this narrative might have not yet factored in is the extent to which NASREC17 could be repeatable in December 2022 or not. Notwithstanding the an...

      The political war for the soul of the ANC is indeed a never-ending one. In an in-ANC election year, the contest to be in charge of the hegemonic power that comes with being in its leadership intensifies. Where the first battle is going to be is a conundrum whose resolution unfolds as the actual date of the conference gets closer. However, the Ethekwini region, and because of its membership size, has for a while emerged as a decisive primary en route to the national conference.   The outcome of the 2022 Regional Conference of the ANC in Ethekwini will unleash a barrage of commentary on the seriousness of the ANC to deal with the perceived corruption within its ranks. Already some analysts have started to resign their commentaries into ideational spaces that seek to isolate the ANC as a serious partner in the global struggle against political elite-led corruption. The Ramaphosa war against corruption might have suffered a serious blow. The question, therefore, is...

     "The use of metaphors and parables remains one of the greatest assets in the African education system. Supported by a rigorously used system of storytelling and use of symbols, metaphors have for centuries provided indigenous scholarship about and for African civilizations. The intellectual resilience of African wisdom cues and philosophy endowed idiomatic expressions have not only served as repositories of community values but also anchored a normative environment comparable to recorded philosophy of other civilizations". "The use therefore of metaphors creates for society a rather neutral platform to reflect on itself in relation to presented phenomena. With the advent of technological advancement, machines have come to create new and interesting metaphors". The pickup or 'bakkie' is one such metaphor in the explanation of the evolution, growth, and development of South Africa. In a discussion with a cousin of mine about current affairs in South Afric...