The th!nc Foundation

The trigger event for the ultimate colonisation of Southern Africa is, among other factors, the global trade demands driven by the pursuit of better trade routes to the East. The Dutch East India Company (VOC), one of the earliest multinational corporations involved in global trade, established a refreshment station at the Cape in 1652 after several shipwrecks along the shores. This station was mainly to provide resting and resupply points for ships travelling to and from the East Indies , with essentials such as water, food, and other provisions.  Despite the dispossession and the brutally extractive effects on the indigenous people, the DEIC decision established South Africa as a geopolitical hub with several global refreshment capabilities beyond the narrow colonial objectives that followed. Beyond the imperialist intents of later European nations, the refreshment character of South Africa assumed new and globally decisive meanings. As the G20 summit sat in Soweto ,...

  Politicians rely on credibility , credentials , and past performance or history to establish their right to seek legitimacy as public representatives. Conversely, societal leadership preferences have evolved beyond routine choices; they now reflect evidence and the ability to steer prospects, which is crucial for understanding current political dynamics .  Because society has been organising itself around issues of public power management , the criteria for leadership have risen. This means that being a politician now involves adapting to shifting, non-fixed social norms that underpin the society they aim to serve. In South Africa, the multiple, diverse, multiracial or multicultural political economy and socioeconomic interests are increasingly reliant on the quality of political leadership.  XXX It is no longer a secret that the country is in a warming-up succession battle for a leader in whom the executive authority of the republic would vest. The contest has ...

South Africa has entered its proverbial hall of mirrors, where everyone must be brave enough to face a mirror and reflect on their origins, especially those who benefited from past injustices. This is because our South African identity stubbornly remains a point of discontent regarding the arrangements of economic and symbolic power that have escaped critical scrutiny. We are therefore compelled to examine the phenomenon of beneficiaries of past injustices and accept their recognition.  In recognising those injustices, we must ask whether our acknowledgement that they are there and true is simply about compliance to the Constitution or an attempt to uphold the status quo. For posterity’s sake, we should question whether the recognition is a symptomatic feature of guilt management by those who continue to benefit from the injustice. Is this a form of political or social mastery to insulate the benefits of acknowledged injustices without committing to the political or epistemologica...

The Democratic Alliance has made Black Economic Empowerment an election issue. it has put the BEE policy of government in the centre of its campaign message. This matter has morphed to a level where it is now defining the empowerment of Black people as a strategic existential issue for the DA as a political party. They have drawn the line. Black Economic Empowerment is an intervention policy to deal with the systemic and then state sponsored exclusion of Black people from participating in the economy. Notwithstanding that it was modelled as a restitutive policy and not a self standing thesis of empowering Black people, as a systemic policy to address the templates of economic dominance in South Africa it has a profound moral and normative standing.  In a society where race and gender are stubborn vectors of all manner of analysis and continue to define access and opportunity, it is immature to target affirmative action programs such as Black Economic Empowerment. It is true, and ar...

  The era of lawfulness and politics in South Africa has commenced. The Madlanga Commission is undeniably focused more on scrutinising prerogative and arbitrary government actions, which are decisions made by those in power without proper regard for the rule of law, than on what is publicly displayed. Executive authority overreach is under investigation. The inquiry has thus far emphasised the extent, importance, and legality of the power of ministers or executive authorities to issue directives.  The validity of the politics behind public policy can no longer override the lawful obligations of organs of state, human or otherwise, appointed or elected. The government’s role as the institution bound to adhere to the rule of law—delivering services lawfully—has entered a new and critical phase. Henceforth, politicians must know and respect the constitutional order’s limits on their vocation.   Whether elected or appointed, organs of state, institutions, or funct...

The edited version was published in TimesLive on 26th October 2025 The African National Congress is in a phase of renewal and rediscovery, grappling with its ongoing political issues, particularly the integrity of its influential leaders. Over the past decade, very few of its top six, and later seven, leaders at all levels of the organisation have avoided allegations of misconduct. However, this crisis also presents an opportunity for significant change and renewal within the party.  The crisis has become so severe that the ANC has had to dismiss a secretary general due to a formal charge of malfeasance. It also had a former president arrested, rightly or wrongly, for contempt of court related to a commission of inquiry into the state of capture in the RSA.  The ANC is engaged in a significant succession battle with contenders who may have to compete based on who has the least to answer regarding perceived corruption or malfeasance. If it exists at all, the succession debate ...

 Published in the Sunday Times , 12 October 2025, as The true test of Mkhwanazi’s evidence General Mkhwanazi has crafted a space for himself as an opinion maker in the management and direction of policing in South Africa . He has assumed an authority status on police practice in a country where shallow policy understanding rules professional spaces. Endowed with the moral force of fighting criminality and the syndicates that sustain it, he has accumulated sufficient social capital to be a towering moral voice on policing, and by default, the essence of public service. His command of policing practice and theory earned him the endearment of an otherwise politically leadership-deficient society.  While Mkhwanazi has raised several thematic issues regarding the administration of the state, he comes across as a well-groomed securocrat . By his own admission, he reveres the securocratic approach to policing, which was his foundational training and socialisation as a police offic...