The th!nc Foundation

  One of the most preventable decisions that have plunged the country into a disaster is the introduction of independent power producers and how the country transitions to that future. While in climate change standards, the decision might have been one of the best, in how it impacts the livelihoods of South Africans, it comes out as the worst decision ever to be made by a country’s National Executive. The rigid organisational structure the governing complex has grown into, the muted fear to challenge the centre by voices of reason within the governing complex, has put a country in a condition where perishing at the hands of benevolent dictatorship contexts is a reasoned option. Decisions on electricity were thus taken within the prism of economic interests of imposing the creation of a new establishment by hook or crook.  Thus far, we have seen a growing imbalance between thinking and doing. With the dearth of innovation and long-term political economy thinking in the governin...

     Between 1985 and 1989, South Africa was dealing with the reality of having to enter into a political settlement between the governing National Party and the ANC as the then undisputed leader of the global anti-apartheid alliance anchored on the continuous delegitimisation of the State as the trusted custodian of a better and secure future of South Africa.  At that time, the South African economy suffered one of its worst legitimacy crises with the investor community. There was a growing belief in the desirability of engaging with the ANC as heir apparent or potential successor in law of the state's legislative, judicial, and executive authority. The white middle class was feeling the pinch of global isolation and increased insecurity at the prospect of some form of insurrection by the ANC and its then elaborate underground structures.    The state was in a legitimacy crisis. The Nelson Mandela enigma was being foregrounded as reports of secret ta...

     Vectors that will define the upcoming national elections will undoubtedly be energy security, a job-creating growing economy, and a functioning criminal justice system. The 2023 SONA will have failed to grasp the true feelings of society and emergencies in South Africa if it does not address what proposals will be in place to stop the growing fragility of the democratic state pragmatically. Society will not be holding its fragile breath for answers from their hope in the human and institutional leadership of President Ramaphosa, organs of state, and the private sector. Murmurs of an economic CODESA euphemistically called the need for a social compact, are striking indicators of a national consensus that the governing centre might not be holding as it should. There is also a view that from 1990 to 1994 (cognitive, political, or otherwise), the elite consensus is disintegrating at best and, at worst, no longer in existence and should be restored.  The liber...

       South Africa is undergoing a stressful period of load shedding and its attendant down-the-line failings, primarily how it is disrupting electricity-dependent industry sectors. The implications of these disruptions and other public infrastructure failings are redefining how voters will henceforth understand the importance of their voting power. There is, therefore, a growing challenge to the social and political capital the ANC has amassed during the struggle against apartheid colonialism and, thus, its hegemony during elections.  With its expanding perceptual appeal as the alternative to the ANC, the national opposition complex is at the forefront of this challenge, albeit with a coalition government flair and parlance. The opposition promises an alternative society, despite failing where it has had governing opportunities. The governing ANC must rise to the challenge. Unfortunately, it faces the task of understanding the true nature of the national dis...

     South Africa might be entering a new phase of anti-system politics that does not have race and apartheid colonialism as its vector of analysis and existence. Literature on anti-system or Establishment politics reveals that fundamentally, anti-system activists, and ultimately voters, are bred by frustrations with political systems they perceive as broken and with economies that reward only the wealthiest. This generally occurs in societies where a democracy promises equality, rights, and equity for all voters, and yet the predominant political economy, more acutely capitalism, continually delivers inequality, poverty, and unemployment. The rise of anti-system parties or civil society movements is "the direct consequence of loosening the bond between voters and the representatives they elect, and the increasing perception that political parties serve a narrow elite of career politicians and insider interests". Those in command of borrowed public power tend to dismiss a...