Despite a deeply flawed presidency, Nelson Mandela’s charisma, inclusiveness and forgiveness make him global South Africans’ favourite international statesman. Pieter de Lange looks at his successes and failures.
While motorists complain of ‘the gantry who stole Christmas’, the rage against the e-tolling machine goes much deeper than cost and inconvenience. Will motorists, churches, labour and opposition parties manage to catalyse themselves into sustained resistance, or are e-tolls really a fait accompli?
Nkandla is symbolic of how the people’s hope and faith and optimism has been variously abused, misused and ultimately destroyed. It is the tipping-point in the abusive relationship, argues Kameel Premhid.
ANC deputy president and Struggle stalwart Cyril Ramphosa has put backs up after a stray comment to a Limpopo resident yesterday upset Afrikaans-speaking South Africans
Andrew Feinstein will be discussing the current state of South Africa and the ANC – the state of the party, internal dynamics and power struggles and what he thinks the next few years will hold. Andrew will also be informing us of the progress of the Arms Deal Commission of Enquiry.
As the 2014 elections draw nearer, the National Assembly has approved the Electoral Amendment Bill, despite protests from the DA.
ANC supporters assaulted a Democratic Alliance member who had supported a DA candidate to replace the ANC mayor in the hotly-contested Tlokwe (former Potchefstroom) municipality on Wednesday.
Leader of newly formed opposition party Agang, Mamphele Ramphele has made clear her party’s stance on corruption and calls upon South Africa’s leader, President Jacob Zuma, to declare his assets after persistent accusations of corruption and embezzlement of public funds.
Channel 4 reporter Inigo Gilmore speaks to the wife of Andries Tatane, a South African activist killed by police in 2011, and reveals compelling new evidence of the police’s role during and after the Marikana massacre in 2012.
The Sharpeville shooting marked a turning point in Apartheid’s fortunes. The massacre of 69 protestors by police galvanised world opinion and was the first real shot-in-the-arm to the anti-Apartheid movement in the West. Meanwhile, inside the country, Sharpeville set off a wave of rioting and unrest and set the stage for an entirely new level of Government repression in the decade to come.
Former ANC spy Barry Gilder provides an insightful personal account into his espionage days under the oppressive apartheid regime in South Africa.
The immediate after-effect of the adoption of the Freedom Charter was increasing paranoia in the Apartheid state. As Chief Albert Luthuli said of the Treason Trial which came shortly thereafter: “That grim pre-dawn raid, deliberately calculated to strike terror into hesitant minds and impress upon the entire nation the determination of the governing clique to stifle all opposition, made one hundred and fifty-six of us, belonging to all the races of our land, into a group of accused facing one of the most serious charges in any legal system.”
Madiba’s relative believes that the current government has failed South Africans and wants to join the opposition party.
In the latest chapter of what has been termed the “poo wars” in Cape Town, a of group of protestors dumped bucketloads of human waste at the drop-and-go entrance of Cape Town International Airport.
The DNA of the South African voter is not complicated. It is summed up in the Bill of Rights; it is protected by the Constitution. It has an independent judiciary. It is mirrored through a free press. All these life forces are being threatened by politics, argues Pieter-Dirk Uys.
South Africa has been declared the ‘Protest Capital of the World’. Politicians and media talk about ‘service delivery protests’. However, what is really taking place is the ‘rebellion of the poor’, South African academics believe.
Julius Malema’s new political platform, the Economic Freedom Fighters, is not about South Africans’ welfare but simply a product of personal frustration, anger, and egocentricity, some of his former allies claim.
Julius Malema is eager to create an alternative political platform made of “radical militants”