The th!nc Foundation

  This was published in the Sunday Times, 13 April 2025. South Africa should not take lightly the idea that no one party has absolute power to govern. It is disruptive to historically established strategic networks and new ones. Nodes of influence have lost significant ground over several aspects of South Africa's state power. The change, though not yet visible to those who believe in the dream of returning to power, is undergoing structural metamorphosis. History’s infrastructure is arguably under construction. What is contested in public is temporary and fluid.   It might have been too early in the life of a transitioning democracy to have the centre of political power diffused. South Africa's challenges have developed a tendency to always invite its history into everything about its present. Invariably, where the nation is expected to work together, it defaults into adversarial collaboration. Disagreement has become an axiomatic point of departure because of ...

This was published in the TimesLive 10 April 2025 The GNU Budget debacle will go down in history, arguably alongside the JZ stretching of the criminal justice system, as a watershed moment that demonstrates to what lengths the RSA constitutional order can go to make its democratic character a reality.  The coalition arrangements of the ANC and the DA, after no party received an absolute mandate to govern, are the single most test of the RSA's resolve to put the nation's interests above those of political parties. The brute truth is that politics' prize is government, which is the state's most active and primary agent, responsible for allocating public goods and services. Those who control the government will have the authority to reconcile society's conflicting interests through instruments like the budget, a core component of the fiscal framework.  In RSA, freely elected public representatives carry the will of the people and the legitimacy to govern by default. Un...

Since the 1994 democratic breakthrough, the ANC has been living a life of a political party contesting for state power, at almost any cost and that of a liberation movement working to transform South Africa and build a more equal society. It lived as the governing party for most of the first thirty years of post-apartheid South Africa. The sins and benefits of incumbency loomed large, and could not leave its form and character untouched. For as long as it stayed in power, the need to renew itself into a political party etched in its historical character could not be urgent.    There has primarily been an expectation that it would eventually have to fully assume a political party character, as its liberation movement role shifts to encompass the whole of the Republic of South Africa. Its objectives as a liberation movement, most of which are now lawful expectations of society from any government of the day, define the success or otherwise of any RSA governing party in all ...

The two South African Nationalist movements, the African National Congress and the National Party, established a year apart in 1912 and 1913, have been the dominant players in defining the anti-colonial struggles that unfolded from the beginning of a constitutional state in 1910 until the ultimate non-racialisation of South Africa’s democratic order. Their collective effectiveness in implementing their political objectives as political parties or movements can be concentrated from 1949 to 2024, where both oversaw the State's Executive Authority.  The National Party built an apartheid state, which culminated in the establishment, in chronological order, of the First Republic, albeit with a deliberate intention of sustaining it as a mainly whites only democratic arrangement.  The declaration of the Republic, by a National Party-led government in 1961, decoupled South Africa from the formal colonial grip of Britain, notwithstanding that the colonial character of the new Republic ...

  This was published in TimesLive 02 April 2025, headlined: Tipping point: the uncomfortable truth draws near. The end of post-liberation hegemonic politics is with us. Society is preoccupied with a search for a stable political order, and what we have is deteriorating. The post-May 2024 convulsions have created a desire for something new in the political landscape. The country yearns for a centre that holds. A call for leadership that inspires hope beyond the bar set by incumbents is in the open.  The country needs men and women loaded with skillful statecraft to move beyond the current stalemate. What the country needs is a human-constructed intervention. The time for tribe-driven or party-political solutions has passed. Individuals within political parties must break loose and occupy the leadership space.    The eventuality of a South Africa led by a reconfigured government of the day is no longer theoretical. The balance of power that has underpinned politi...

  As part of its renewal program, the ANC has established a facility where its members can come together and participate in a course that repositions the ANC at the center of South African history. The course serves as an intervention to clarify the misconceptions, misinterpretations, and narratives surrounding what the ANC represents as an organisation, a liberation movement, and a societal leader. Attendance is compulsory for all members, as it is critical to being recognised as a member in good standing.   The Foundation Program bridges gaps of history and addresses key challenges.  These include the reluctance to teach ANC history for fear of electioneering, and the sidelining of liberation history in schools. It re- emphasises African liberation struggle history as a core element of the broader context of all history regarding South Africa. This will go  a long way to clear  the confusion surrounding the raw experiences of the liberation promises the...