The th!nc Foundation

Asked in a Sunday Times interview if South Africa was ready for a white president, Pieter Groenewald, the leader of the Freedom Front Plus, retorted with an emphatic "No, we are too close to apartheid still". He said, "It would be difficult to convince traditional ANC voters to ditch the governing party with all its flaws, should the opposition pick a white leader as its presidential candidate". It is not the entirety of the answer that this rendition wants to decode, but that "we are too close to apartheid still", which is interesting to decode.  In South Africa, the arc of history never bends towards delusion, it confronts reality as it presents itself to humanity. If minority rights, defence of the Afrikaner cause in Africa, and the mission to liquidate the governing ANC of its moral high ground for having led the demise of a racial oligarchy, apartheid, was a hegemon, the Freedom Front Plus is one cohort of South Africans that believe it will last fore...

South Africa witnessed the filling of its largest stadium, the Calabash, at the instance of celebrating ten years of the Economic Freedom Front led by Julius Malema. Decorated as the former President of COSAS and ANCYL, Julius is by far one of the most seasoned leaders of his generation and a rising political leader of the 2020s. The consolidation of Julius from an inconvenient youth to a potential alternative that South Africa might be searching for was on display.  Brand EFF and Julius Malema had an encounter with South Africa and the world in the dimensions of time and space. The generational cohorts that Malema is threading into a political movement not only embody contemporary political discontent and imagination of South Africa but do trigger emotional signals and questions about what the liberation struggle was about. Save for the truths of the land question, foregrounding corruption as a national pandemic, and liquidating the ANC as the singular custodian of the economic em...

In Politics, the concept Establishment " describes the dominant social group, the élite, who control a polity, an organisation, or an institution. In the praxis of power, The Establishment usually is a self-selecting, closed élite entrenched within specific institutions; hence, a relatively small social class can exercise all socio-political control". Suppose you thought South Africa does not have a sophisticated Establishment. In that case, you only need to follow how Paul Mashatile was received as Deputy President of the Country and potential heir apparent.  Mashatile is separate from the dominant secret and unauthorised power network operating independently of our state's above-ground political leadership in pursuit of consensus many of us are not part of. Despite the political mandate politicians receive from the public, these networks, which have constituted themselves as a deep state, have succeeded in manipulating the public state for a while. I...

In a democracy defined by a written Constitution with a clear distinction of authorities as a function of the separation of powers, the contest for political power can easily default on personalities than the actual demands the Constitution imposes on the leadership function. South Africa is facing an election where individuals as leaders will define its future more than the parties they come from. The political party is fast becoming the platform for branded individuals to launch themselves for approval to govern the country.  The time for politicians to "shed preconceived notions, gain control of their reputation, and be as authentic as they can has arrived. Albeit South African politicians continue to see themselves as a plural representing a collective, called the party, the sovereignty of the individual has elevated the personal brand to be about "self-awareness and self-preservation". A leader's conduct, association, and cognitive persona summarise what society...

The total strategy was apartheid South Africa's response to what it perceived as the total onslaught to annihilate 'white power' and dominance on the African continent as represented by an industrialised Republic of South Africa. As a political survival construct aimed at making the apartheid crime against humanity a frontier to defend an otherwise diminishing influence of colonial power over Africa in general and South Africa in particular, the total strategy was intended to serve several purposes.  With the perceived threat of communism to global capitalism occupying centre stage in geopolitical strategies of Western powers, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, which positioned the SACP as a key ally of the ANC as leader of the liberation movement, was theorised as an anti-West program. As a result, the total strategy assumed a character of "winning the support of Western governments and their hegemonic intentions".    With the West, then, being originat...

For the South African post-apartheid political establishment, how they contest political power to remain firmly in their hands seems they must survive narratives every time they approach succession epochs. The 2022 Conference of the ANC was supposed to be a moment of triumph for the Paul-Mashatile-as-a-node establishment. What is now unfolding indicates that as-a-node, he is under siege to be allowed to succeed Cyril Ramaphosa as President of the ANC and maybe the country.  When ANC cadres search for solutions to any siege they find themselves, or any of its leaders, they habitually turn towards themselves and manufacture theories about each other as being responsible. They package themselves into distinct factions and mine from within factions tormenting pasts that make them ignore what drives the siege against the organisation and its leaders. In the whirlpool of fighting amongst themselves, they feed the narrative designed to drive the wedge inside the ANC.  When a narrativ...

The past four elections for national and local government (2014, 2016, 2019, and 2024) have communicated voter sentiments about how they feel about those who govern them in all spheres of government. The granularity of details about the growing discontent at those that govern has voter numbers as evidence of shifting support to other political parties and outright withdrawal from participating in the approval or otherwise of those procuring for the political mandate. There is undoubtedly emerging consensus that the governing party 'has recklessly pursued policies that have not improved citizens’ quality of life to warrant wholesale approval of the democratic order through increased voter participation'. The result has been protracted periods of economic inequality, social pain, and political strife, notwithstanding successive mandates in the hope of a better life for all.  If the standard of measure is that of checking to what extent are our 'freely elected representatives...

The decline of political engagement in the structures of the ANC at the altar of a politics-for-money culture has impacted the value of being a member of the movement. There was a time in the history of the ANC, being its member attracted prestige because of how sophisticated those who belonged to it were. The pursuit of democracy and freedom was represented by those that spoke about it. As role models, they became an abstraction of the reality that freedom itself can become. Those who articulated the idea of freedom and emancipation from apartheid colonialism made joining an otherwise risky enterprise of being in the struggle a lucrative endeavour to recalibrate political power relations in favour of changing the lives of 'the people'.  Being recruited into the movement was designed to be distinct from one that compels you into the peripheral activities created as a firmament within which a member of the movement would thrive. As young people, we were attracted to spaces where...

In his tribute to Essop Pahad, under a hawkish watch of the ANC's most organised formation of elders and veterans outside its Veterans League, the 101 Veterans, Paul Mashatile invoked a Marxist adage to characterise the deeper issues inside his organisation, which are not in our immediate purview.  He said Comrade Essop Pahad is one of the ANC leaders who lived to personify the adage that "to leave error unrefuted is to encourage intellectual immorality". What “errors are left unrefuted which encourage (intellectual) immorality” when we are now waking up to headlines of   “there is a plot to oust me”? Loaded as this adage is, and the context within which it was invoked, it would also be scholarship immorality not to read into it in the wake of a concretising in-ANC post-Ramaphosa succession battle. Scholarship morality is the urge to express order and arrangement for a general standard by which emerging phenomena can be deciphered. To allow a discourse or phenomenon to ...

It is rare to find a society, political parties, and civil society movements discussing the future of their country's leadership with the incumbent still in charge and pursuing a legally acceptable second term. This rarity is what a society like South Africa needs to project into the future whilst in the bunker of decisive leadership on many fronts. The crisis of government, which is arguably a crisis of leadership, as well as that of a society in search of a national identity through a maze of institutionalised diversities and divisions of class and race, might necessitate a crystal balling moment with the incumbents joining in to say without us what might be best. This rendition travels into that space. (It would be prudent to posit what post-Ramaphosa means for this rendition. It includes a context where the person of Ramaphosa is no longer the President of South Africa under the conditions that he is at the writing of this piece. This might mean one or either of the following c...