The th!nc Foundation

The existence of any illegal market or context where favours are exchanged for protection at any cost is a precondition for all forms of mafia-ism to develop and thrive in any society. As legitimacy to lead society and merit as criteria to be appointed to positions or provide services started to give way to connections, a new and illegal market began to develop in South Africa. Because this market grew into a political economy, it required a unique sophistication and 'government' to survive and thrive.  In democracies where a substantial number of well-trained military personnel are unemployed and where employed, idling, the crime market becomes essential to open demand for security. The abundance of people skilled with violence and the capacity to kill is generally a dangerous resource when the quality and calibre of politicians a democracy attracts is at unacceptably low levels. The need for protection that a state in crisis cannot provide makes paramilitary security the best...

THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY TIMES OF 28 JANUARY 2024 The governing party's response towards the formation of the MK Party has thus far made it play into the hands of its most threatening adversary since 1994. The post-January 08 activities to counter the growing support of MK have come to a "go for Zuma reputation at all costs" and silence the "nywe nywe criticisms of the ANC from within the opposition complex". The ANC's electioneering juggernaut was unleashed to show its public support, as demonstrated in Mbombela Stadium and will be repeated in the Moses Mabhida and FNB Stadiums. Plausible as they are, these strategies need to respond to the source of why the MK Party was formed and why it is becoming attractive to disillusioned activists of the ANC as a liberation movement.  The fact that the governing party went for the person of Jacob Zuma, with allegations it had defended him before, is making it look desperate. In Sam Shilowa's parlance, com...

Published on the Sunday Times 23 January 2024 When Jacob Zuma announced his decision to campaign for the MK Party actively, South Africa's political order started fretting about the implications. The ANC's unusual response indicated that the decision caught them off guard. While the opposition complex was expected to be exited at the birth of yet another party to weaken the ANC, they were uncharacteristically mute in their celebration or otherwise. The response of the ANC's vocal elders, the calculated response of COSATU, and that of the 'Establishment' clergy and civil society have displayed a form of paralysis. With reports of high-profile resignations, citing retirement as their reason by ANC leaders known to have not supported Ramaphosa in the 2017 and 2022 conferences, the ANC might be at the foot of what qualifies as an internal rebellion, definition-wise. This is supported by the fact that the ANCYL is reported to have made known its distaste of the Jacob Zum...

Published in the Sunday Times on 16 January 2024 With Jacob Zuma's decision to openly campaign for the MK Party and not the ANC, of which he is still a member, an intense debate about whether or not to put him through the disciplinary process has engulfed the governing party. Some have suggested that since he has 'walked away' from the ANC, he does not require attention. Others have proposed a need for a formal response about the desirability of his continued membership, where the process is suspension, disciplinary hearing, and then firing. There is also a third view which argues that he has not violated any of the ANC rules, regulations, and policies but instead introduced a form of protest to show discontent about the direction the organisation is taking.  The third view argues that Jacob Zuma has not violated any rules, regulations, or policies of the ANC but has raised the challenges the organisation faces. According to this view, Zuma sees the MK Party as a catalyst t...

The Israeli response to South Africa's rendition at the International Court of Justice reveals the depth of crisis in the State of Israel regarding how it deals with its Palestinian reality. How Israel put the best foot forward and attitude towards Palestinian lives demonstrated the dramatic manifestation of the systemic problems of its social order. During the rendition, insurgent actors and (negative) ideologies exposed ingrained patterns according to which Israeli society functions in matters concerning Palestinians. Israel's overall demeanour and posture towards Palestinians confirmed that it is in a twilight zone of persistence beyond self legitimation. It is clear that Israel interacts with the world about Palestine against the background of a historically ingrained concept of self that might be the source of how it reads the growing isolation from other nations.  As a people, it would seem Israelis have defined or structured a civilisation based on the invisibility of th...

What has been difficult for the dominated global South to express its discontent regarding the plight of the Palestinian people has, at last, found a voice through South Africa’s courage to take on its arch-enemy, apartheid. Gaza striped pyjamas were gradually becoming an accepted fashion to the extent that it is not worn by anyone in the Middle East. It is because of the pursuit of her declared national interest to protect and promote its constitutional order and, more acutely, the mission to heal the divisions and injustices of the past and contribute to the establishment of a global society based on democratic values, social justice, and fundamental human right that South Africa punched a historically weighty Israel. In a world where the capacity of all members of the UN Security Council to stand on the side of justice is overrated, the wrath of colonialism and apartheid South Africa experienced has beaten the gentleness of diplomacy she might still have at the provocation of apar...

THIS PIECE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY TIMES OF 07 JANUARY 2024 UNDER THE HEADLINE "MK PARTY COULD TURN ZUMA INTO A NEW BUTHELEZI" . THIS IS THE UNEDITED VERSION One of the famous quotes by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi was, 'So long as the Zulu people are here, clearly, I will still have a role in this country.' The Chief abrogated the role of championing Zulu Nationalist Interests to himself. In this role, he masterminded the centrality of the Zulu Monarch as the centrepiece of South Africa's cultural expression. The heroic threading of the Zulu Kingdom by King Shaka Ka Senzangakhona was consolidated into an aspect of modern democracy by Buthelezi in ways few other Zulu leaders could muster. While our Constitution was a modern construct of what the people's will be, Buthelezi infused the answers that antiquity could be into its modernity.  In this role, he positioned himself as the conduit to the Zulu King. Despite being a political party leader, Inkatha man...

Basic political theory teaches that individuals are components of interests. They are embodiments of the diversities in society upon which politics are generally based. Their sovereign character as okindividuals makes them not simply puppets of interests but can operate as nodes of sponsored blocks of interests. With accumulated social, political, and economic capital, they can easily become the substrates of interests and thus affect the course of politics through their opinions or coalitions.  Individuals often favoured by history will define, structure, or construct a political order with which they will answer the questions 'who rules', 'who should rule', and 'how to be ruled'. Over time, the political elites presiding over the political order, and based on the power and resources they command, have been able to create arrangements with which they would govern society, including themselves. They agreed that this would be called government of, by, and for the...

The decision by South Africa to stick its neck out in what will go in history as its second anti-apartheid frontier is important beyond the Nelson Mandela directive that "our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." The ICJ case will subject South Africa, and the ANC in particular, to a storm of heightened (foreign) investment strikes, sophisticated regime change funding of political adversaries, and a cocktail of interdependent decisions by the global Israeli lobby to supercharge the neutralisation of South Africa as an emerging existential threat to the moral legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.  Despite the presentation of the RSA decision as a profound solidarity with the Palestinian endeavour, the action will go in history as one of the international actions it took to advance its recently revised definition of national interests. The new international relations strategic path will henceforth be affected by the founding values of the ...