When Minister Blade Nzimande was appointed to the Cabinet by President Jacob Zuma, some voices in the South African Communist Party (SACP) questioned the wisdom of him continuing to serve as the general secretary of the SACP. Given the experience of the SACP with some of its members who served in Thabo Mbeki’s cabinet and who often seemed [...]
Posts under ‘democracy’
The ANC is not the state
Living in a constitutional democracy can be unsettling and complicated – especially if one has not embraced the values underlying a functioning constitutional democracy. In such a democracy all role players must accept that there are competing views of what constitutes the public good. They also have to accept that it is legitimate for members [...]
The return of fake morality?
Because my parents were members of the Dutch Reformed Church, I had to attend the church service and Sunday school every week. What fun! The dominee (minister), speaking in the ridiculously pretentious accent learnt at the kweekskool (seminary), usually warned in apocalyptic terms against the evils of sex before marriage (or sex with an Engelse meisie or a black [...]
What do we talk about when we talk about “transformation”?
Is it at all possible to write sensibly but critically about the way in which the concept of “transformation” has evolved in kleptocratic South Africa? “Transformation” has become a buzzword that is much bandied about and much abused, but few people explain what they mean when they use the word. Like mother hood and apple [...]
Boiled chickens pretending to be plumed peacocks
Suddenly there is a lot of (artificially whipped-up) hysteria about the media doing the rounds amongst certain politicians. They want to muzzle the media by introducing a Media Tribunal “with teeth” and are also hell bent on passing the Protection of Information Bill which will criminalize much of what goes for investigative journalism in this [...]
The Princess and the moon
One can learn a lot from reading the legal opinions provided to Ministers. This week I learnt a new word - longiloquent (meaning long-winded) – by reading a legal opinion provided to Lindiwe Sisulu, who is the Minister of Defence and is also known as The Princess.
I also learnt that when Ministers account to Parliament they are members of the [...]
Isn’t it all a bit too easy?
Isn’t it all just a bit too easy? Last week the four former Free State University students known as the Reitz Four were found guilty on a charge of crimen injuria by the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court for making a video in which they humiliated 5 workers who were probably old enough to be their mothers. [...]
Shock and awe at Parliament Street
Reading through the minutes of the public hearings in Parliament on the Protection of Information Bill (see here, here, here and here), is a bit like reading a novel that deals with the Holocaust in a humoristic manner. One is horrified and shocked by the utter lack of decency, logic, humility, intelligence and any sense of respect for ordinary human [...]
On by-election results
The most recent local government by-election results (from elections held on 21 July) should at the very least concern political strategists of the governing ANC. A few interesting trends have been confirmed by these results.
First, the ANC’s support amongst colored voters in the Western Cape – even in rural areas – has collapsed dramatically. The ANC [...]
Sleepwalking through an empty life
Sometimes I wonder whether we would all not have been far happier if we had known absolutely nothing about what was happening in our world and if we were unable to remember – even for one week – how we had been wronged and hurt by others.
What if we had not been able to remember how the apartheid [...]
