The th!nc Foundation

         On 11 February 1990, South Africa, and the world witnessed one of the most epochal events in human history, the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. This was the most symbolic of acts by the then apartheid state that they were committed to the irreversibility of a process to democratise South Africa. Walking through the gates of Victor Vester prison was a human being whose name evoked different emotions in a watching world. His walk to freedom did not only change South Africa's image of political reality, it represented the most astounding political shifts in the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall.   What followed was the redefinition of democracy in the sub-continent, where a society sat and agreed on the arrangements with which it would govern itself and relate to other sovereign nations. This agreement was chiselled as a legal expression of the political wishes of society as represented by political elites assembled inside the walls of Pa...

       The South African politics and political analysis academic media complex is faced with the intricate question of what would constitute a centre of politics. For a while, the battle to dislodge the ANC as the context of all political contexts, given its historical advantage of successfully leading the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid alliance, also called the liberation movement, had seemed an impossible task. If the key resource to wrestle out of the ANC its legitimacy to lead society based on the adopted constitutional values at the CODESA settlement, the ANC might be firmly standing on shaky ground. The legitimacy to govern is fast becoming the basis upon which becoming a governing party in South Africa is anchored. History, nostalgia, and no-impact rhetoric can no longer define the political legitimacy of any party, but a demonstration of capability and capacity to lead a sophisticated world top 30 economy is the new criteria.   If service delivery, ma...

       It was not just a British Royal Funeral; it was the laying to rest of the noblest of the order of the gutter. The United Kingdom buried its longest-serving monarch as it introduced into the posterity of that power, King Charles III, as the Supreme Defender of The Faith. In ushering its King, the United Kingdom sang its Imperial Anthem, "God save the King". Trappings of aristocracy, power, and the sovereign got represented not only by vintage English class and grandeur but the full mast flag signifying that the monarch was in residence at Windsor Castle. Inside the St George's Cathedral were flags representing the different orders defining the essence of British hierarchies of power and pecking order. Towering as the greatest of European Monarchies, the English Monarchy cemented its position as the custodian of one of the mediums of global interaction, the English language. The reflection of the various orders of dominance displays their structure as a backgrou...

          South Africa has for a while been grappling with how to make in-ANC political trends to be just about the ANC. The battle to discount the ANC as the context of all contexts has been ongoing in hegemonic spaces, almost equal to the establishment of liberal order as a political economy path for South Africa. Gradually in-ANC politics started to follow this pull, and the most visible in-ANC consequence has been the rise of 'who leads the ANC' and the retreat of what it stands for. This coup of the personality cult over policy got diffused in pursuing voter support as a natural replacement to its traditional leader of society custom. The convenience of making ANC fundamental policy trajectories about 'investor confidence' and its elections winning rhetoric to be about 'voter support' impacted its 'social transformation' thrust as leader of society. What became sovereign was its individual leaders and not what it proffered as a value proposition to ...

       Post-liberation mid-course evaluation of South Africa is here. The state has a legitimate government system. A constitutional democratic order with profound liberal order characteristics is theoretically in place and practically under construction. Systems that undergird it are a cultural necessity out of which the order's norms and standards could be habits that ultimately instruct a national value system.   Africa's anti-colonial struggles required, which would have been pure to 'decolonise' state, a social mobilisation posture that targeted institutions and frameworks that made colonialism work as an order. Consequently, a general disrespect for the colonial order and its foundations took an uninformed populace hostage, discrediting and undermining what made the order function, including its science. The outcome of this has been a clear and gradual loss of battles in a war against what made order functional, a condition whose manifestations include a d...

     South Africa became a Constitutional democracy in 1910 after a non-blacks-only consensus to establish a State whose sovereignty would be defined within the context of being a colonial outpost of Britain. This began a process of consolidating political power and decision-making into a National Legislature, supported by an Executive Arm of government. Any arising disputes were adjudicated by courts of law. The new state's legislative, executive, and judicial authority was defined within the constraints imposed by South Africa's limits as a colonial outpost. Described as a colony with a resident Governor-General whose office had all executive authority vested in it, the legal status of citizens was legitimised by the extent to which the legitimacy of the British Crown prevailed in an emerging democracy. The arrangements with which those at the post-Anglo Boer conflict consensus manufacturing table agreed to govern South Africa provided the first stirrings of locali...

      The liberation struggle in South Africa has had vaguely defined ends if the core policy documents instructing the outcomes attained at its 'breakthrough' moment in 1994 are anything to go by. Incubated in one of Africa's foremost liberal democracy pursuing political parties, the ANC, the negotiations settlement outcome reverted to the 1912 consensus of a Wilberforcean Liberalism character and a Garveyist posture of freedom by those that established it. Its roots are unquestionably liberal and somewhat congressional in approach to politics. Revolutionary rhetoric came as a response to a deaf and racist 'liberal' autocratic order. The struggle settled as a constitutional democracy pursuing establishing a 'national democratic order. The colonial construct of the state stayed intact, and the legal edifice which instructed both colonialism and apartheid is still in place save for a higher legitimacy it got out of the settlement. The templates of economic domina...