The th!nc Foundation

In 24 months, South Africa will face the Local Government elections to constitute the 7th Municipal Administration in its municipal jurisdictions. Local government elections give us municipal ward-based reaction feedback on the impact of statewide plans on households. Society engages with and experiences government through municipal government. This makes 2026 a make-or-break political year for all parties, particularly the ANC.  In the 2026 municipal elections, the ANC will face a graver threat to its ability to remain a significant player in South Africa's political power architecture. Never has it faced multiple threats to its power at the same time in such a short space of time. The end of five-year terms by its sub-national structures- from ward-based branches to almost all its regional executive committees. Not since the 2021 overall municipal elections outcome of less than 50% performance with a national absolute majority, the ANC had to contend with the reality of a prove...

All those who have been members of the ANC, current members, and activists who, in one instance or another, have had a relationship with programs of the ANC would know it is a movement, worldview, paradigm, and a collective psyche about politics. It is not only a convergence of social justice, economic justice, human dignity, human rights, non-racialism, and non-sexism but a convolution of politics and the pursuit of true justice. A construct of baNtu leaders, the ubuNtu that was infused into it makes it a repository of humanism and, thus, an abstraction of what the world can be.  Born at the time one of the world's leading torments to humanity, racial segregation and racism, later formalised as a state-sponsored racism program and subsequently declared a crime against humanity, apartheid, it grew into a global moral force or lung against racism. Facing one of the world's most brutal and sophisticated versions of European imperialism, represented by British colonialism and la...

The edited version published in TimesLive on 14 July 2024 was titled "The GNU is reshaping the dynamics between political parties." It is almost two months since the May 29 National and Provincial elections gave South Africa a less than 50% outcome by any political party. There is no absolute majority to govern. This forced a coalition government, as a new arrangement RSA would have to be governed by in the 7th Administration. This has not only aroused RSA from a strategic slumber but also spurred the political and economic establishment complexes to action and ushered in fresh thinking on the democratic and constitutional order the country is still threading. In response to the disintegrating national unity, a consequence of the persistent templates of economic and socioeconomic dominance and radicalised and populist programs rooted in RSA's troubled past, the formation of a coalition government, known as the government of national unity (GNU), has been lauded as the a...

 Published in the TimesLife on 11 July 2024 under the caption "ANC has graduated into a partner and ideological sweetheart of the DA". The emerging political landscape in South Africa redefines how political adversaries compete for voters' hearts, souls, and minds. From the moment the ANC succeeded in chiselling its monumental policy documents as the substrates of RSA's constitutional order, it had bequeathed the basis of its existence to all South Africans. The liberation task was legally that of all citizens. While it retained the bragging rights to have led the execution of a gallant anti-apartheid struggle, it was no longer up to it alone to determine how the liberation promise becomes a lived experience for all. It has always been a mistake to believe that only the ANC could deliver what the constitutional order promised society; new players with a programmatic approach would have emerged now or in the future.  While the ANC rightfully takes pride in its heroic...

The competitiveness of nations has been measured on several matrices, with economic growth and development as the core measure. This is crucial as it directly impacts society’s quality of life. Nations have added new variables to these matrices, some of which have tracked and benchmarked indices to create acceptable thresholds defining investor confidence. What has been occupying the investor community's attention and growing into a national balance sheet matter is the reputation capital of a nation. This, despite its intangible character, has been able to be reduced to numbers and ratios.    Countries are destinations of human-valued activities and assets. How a country conducts itself is a source of how humanity will judge its relationship with citizens and the enforceability of the law. The credibility of the state and its agencies is a modern-day business issue. Ethical people who want to do business with a country would want to interact and transact with societies that fi...

Published in The Sunday Times 07 July 2024, captioned "The sprouts of reactionary nationalism." When Tintswalo turns sixty and thinks of the moment that marked the historic point of departure of our democratic order, the 2024 National Elections will loom large. The moment when the liberation movement and its allies faced the prospect of losing political power because those it governed on their behalf had lost trust in its ability to deliver the liberation promise in the Constitution they negotiated. The rise of the proportional representation system to regulate absolute majority power has seen South Africa entering a phase of coalition government as a way of building national unity and social cohesion. Only in 1994 has RSA been endowed with a firmament of cooperation and leadership, despite being thinly spread, to consolidate the legal social justice gains and the economic justice deficits into a program South Africans can work on together.    Despite the near-collapse of the...

The concept of political power has been undergoing revisions since the second half of the 1900s. How people agreed on the arrangements to govern each other started to reflect a growing assertiveness of society wanting to claim ownership of political power exercised on their behalf. As these bold demands by humanity to participate grew, the convention that those with power would call the shots was challenged. Waves of political power management started to produce centralised institutions and organisations, many of which have become more complex and acquired greater reach and power.    Theories of power and management, arguably influenced by the context then, concluded that political power works best through large, organised, and bureaucratic systems. The theatres of power, notably governments, were organised to be large, and their efficiency started to cut both ways depending on the human organs of the state-commissioned as the public service. With a monopoly over the coerc...

South Africans are on the brink of a pivotal event: the commencement of a National Dialogue. This process, set to begin in a few months, is a momentous occasion in RSA history, thirty years after the negotiations that led to the 1994 democratic breakthrough. The urgency of this dialogue is underscored by the current political landscape, where national unity is once again a pressing issue following the 2024 elections.  More than just about national unity, the dialogue is marketed as a platform to forge a social compact, address what might not have been resolved by the CODESA settlement, and resolve economic justice concerns threatening the reigning constitutional order. The stability and continuity of the democratic order are at stake. The depth of discontent about economic inequality, persistent economic participation blocking templates of dominance, and the unjust economic value chain realities of South Africa are expected to dominate the focus of the dialogue, offering hope for a...

This was published in TimesLive on 02 July 2024  Establishing the GNU's national executive authority with the President at its helm is the tip of the iceberg our politics must navigate in the next five years or more. The facts are that South Africa has multiple executive authority centres with political mandates that have been separately sourced from voters. Emerging out of an absolute majority party-dominated national sphere of government, the country still needs to mature, in law and general conduct, its intergovernmental relations (IGR) system. The national sphere’s ultimate power on the fiscus created a bureaucratic tradition that might be the first and biggest hurdle to making GNU arrangements to function. The national should start understanding that is operates because it is on the local's jurisdiction. IGR, the interactions and transactions between or amongst spheres of government, is the platform upon which organs of state, elected or appointed, have to find each othe...