The th!nc Foundation

This is a rendition prepared for the launch of Dr. Sibongile Vilakazi's book "Putting Her in Her Place". It could not be read in full at the occasion.  Seldom do we find a book written based on personal experience. In this maze of reading, characterised by envy, jealousy, power, appreciation, mentorship, and collegiality, society will encounter a mixture of themes that take turns on the author's person and the story. We are all born into this world with an identity and consciousness. We are received into homes and immediately after that in 'the village', then society, the nation, and ultimately the world. In these spaces, we choose and work for the places we want to put ourselves or claim a right to some. As we navigate the contestation for those places, we create, generate, and almost always acquire friends, partners, mentors, adversaries, enemies, and destiny helpers who become stakeholders in our lives. These stakeholders abrogate themselves, rightly or w...

Dear Principal, David Makhura  An intense process to renew Africa's oldest political movement and arguably the nexus of political life in South Africa, the ANC, is underway. Its membership and leadership is expected to be determined in altering its habits which have morphed into values its supporters might have internalised.  While its various internal factions and ideological coalitions established around post-liberation interests are all singing renewal hymns and saying prayers, they are all projecting a commitment to entrench a value system that might be detached to many it has recruited.  Thematically, the ANC is a movement whose fairest evaluation can at best be reduced to how non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united, and prosperous it has made South Africa to be. These represent the enduring end-state of the liberation struggle it gallantly led; creating a national democratic society.  Renewal should be about protecting society, through a capable leader of so...

  Uit die Breyten Breytenbach-heid Uit sy gedigte het Afrikaans grys geword  Uit sy sin het Afrikanerdom 'n nuwe reis gevat  Uit die opbruis het groente vleis geword Uit sy gesprekke het Suid-Afrikanerheid in biblioteke gebrou Hy was 'n growwe sout wat die biltong wat Suid-Afrika is, sagter gemaak het Hy kon sonder toesteming die regte kant van Mandela besoek  Omdat hy Breyten was, kon hy 'n inter-rasse digter word Hy het nie muskiete gejag nie,  Muskiete het hom gejag Pardoef! Ek kon jou nie kry nie Het rassisme van hom gesê  Hy was net 'n Breyten met 'n Bach  Hy is by sy Vader omdat hy gesterf het Sy liggaam loop nou 'n nuwe pad Sy gees is steeds met ons Maar Breyten se graf is op ons skouers  Hy gaan nou daagliks met letterkundiges in biblioteke gesels. Net dié wat sy gedigte gaan lees kan sê: "Môre ou Grote" Vir dié wat nie gaan lees nie, is dit 'n groot gemis Ja, hy is weg, maar nog naby 'n Literêre arend het weggevlieg  Net sy Vader wee...

The edited version was published in the Sunday Times on 17th November 2024 The South African coalition government experiment at the national level is facing challenges that might induce its disintegration. The limited time the legislative framework allows for a government to be formed needs to be extended to give more time for coalition agreements to be pragmatically negotiated. The established precedent is that it takes almost 100 days to emerge with a sustainable coalition. Because political party manifestos are set policy positions and should ordinarily be the basis of any coalition agreement, sufficient time to strike genuine compromises is required.    The less than 50% performance in the 2024 elections forced a coalition government arrangement. This gave the ANC a political lifeline. With no clear mandate on who to coalesce with, a hostile relationship between the ANC and the MK Party-EFF complex, and the need to stabilise the fragile democratic order, avoiding further h...

The edited version was published in TimesLive on 12 November 2024 When the concept of “re o rata kaofela,” understood as unquestioning loyalty or infatuation with a leader or party, becomes the dominant force in politics, the traditional political playbook is disregarded.    A core lesson of democracy in several world elections that have thus far taken place in 2024 is that victorious parties and candidates presented to the electorate election manifestos, translating into programmatic appeals to material concerns beyond just defending democracy. The saying that politicians should "always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, live better and in peace, see their lives go forward, and guarantee their children's future", reverberated in voters' minds.    The world saw in the election year a marked rise of "re go rata kaofela" leaders irrespective of their ...

This was published in the TimesLive on 05 November 2024. As South Africans celebrate or reflect on the 100 days and counting of the GNU, it is essential to pause and ask, what does the GNU mean for South African politics? Like any system, especially within the context of politics, the GNU is growing into a catastrophically fragile ensemble that can suddenly lurch into chaos without anyone having anticipated it as a result of an accumulation of factors. From its inception, the GNU has displayed characteristics of a construct born out of unexpected, unforeseen, and discrete transformations.  It has the makings of the structural modification of an elite consensus without generating noises associated with the change of its magnitude. The GNU is a political realignment masterpiece that constitutes the future's historical infrastructure, not its ephemeral surface. It is a convergence of former political adversaries negotiating a new vector of growth and development ou...

This was published on 03 November 2024 in an edited version under the headline "The supply-side dynamics of national human development issues." The unfolding 'tension' surrounding the BELA Act in South Africa is a complex and multifaceted issue. This tension, primarily between the determined and resourceful Ethnonationalist Afrikaner Leadership Complex and the state, is not a simple matter of a shift in language and cultural beliefs among South Africans. It manifests deeper issues rooted in the evolving elite politics. Officially, the majority party's revolutionary project to transfer power to "we the people", where such power is political, economic, and social control is not complete. The constitutional order has decisively transferred political power to "we the people"; we now vote political power in or out of the state. The capability of those we commissioned, through appointment or election, to use the transferred political power to furth...