The substance of the Seriti Commission is important. But those of us who watched a remarkable moment of grace yesterday when Advocate Hoffman was overcome with grief will have been reminded of why this country is so special. "Engrave this upon your heart: there isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you heard their story." –Mary …
Ramphele’s assumption that she will be accepted into civil society, where she can continue her project of ‘active citizenship’ without having to be directly accountable to a real live constituency, speaks volumes. The good doctor is not wrong in this regard. Sadly, many civil society groups will accept her because the sector is not yet …
Mmusi Maimane’s been having a bad time of it. But are the critics barking up the wrong tree? “Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable.” – Toni Morrison For the last few weeks, Mmusi Maimane has been subjected to pretty rough treatment at the hands of a number of prominent black people. The Twitterati had their …
The real critique of last night’s SONA is not that it was boring, it is that the speech was boring on purpose because it sought to depoliticise meaningful things and subsume them under the rubric of “fast-tracked implementation” “stakeholder engagement,” and “delivery mechanisms.” In other words, Zuma deliberately deployed technical language that alienates people to …
EDITORIAL By Salif Romano Niang Bamako — In Mali, the votes of the run-off have been cast. And in sharp contrast to elections in Africa or even Western democracies, the defeated candidate conceded not by press release or defiant speech but by visiting the winner in his living room, surrounded by their families. With the …