The former public protector’s report has stirred national consciousness. Jacob Zuma is swimming against the tide. Is he sinking, or might he still pull the trick of a proverbial cat with nine lives?
The use of the prosecuting authority and the police in ANC succession struggles has a long history. What’s different in the Zuma era is the symbiosis between elite police and the prosecution service.
South African President Jacob Zuma’s days of spinning out court cases indefinitely and at taxpayers’ expense may soon come to an end – possibly his worst news in a week of bad news.
The growing revolt against South Africa’s president, amid state capture allegations, is not an isolated event, but part of a much wider pan-African uprising led by the continent’s disaffected youth.
For the moment President Zuma’s supporters control the governing ANC’s levers of power. But an unprecedented number of people in the ANC are turning against him. How long will the centre hold?
Some students argue wrongly that the ANC has betrayed the promise of free higher education made in the Freedom Charter. The governing party’s populism is also to blame for the confusion.
South Africa’s 2016 medium term budget was awaited with bated breath amid rising political tensions, increasingly violent student protests and the threat of a credit downgrade.
University authorities in South Africa have agreed to most fees protesters’ demands. Yet, the protesters keep moving the goalposts. Do they want more than fees to fall?
South African universities are aflame as student protests for free education turn violent. But, would a non-violent approach, as preached by Martin Luther King, be more effective in their cause?
Closer examination of criminal charges brought against South Africa’s finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, suggest that they are weak in law and serve a political agenda.
The stakes have not been higher since the heady days of the early 1990s when South Africa also looked over the brink. Now it is less about brink and more about who will blink
Recent political events suggest that South Africa is at a crossroad where it could either be tipped into a fully corrupted state or saved by multi-party plurality
The centennial publication of Sol Plaatje’s seminal, ‘Native Life’ is a timely reminder of his estimation of intellectual work, in contrast to the current disparagement of ‘clever blacks’.
The foundation founded by Nelson Mandela in 1999 has done a major revision - it has written off most of his reign as comprising “grand symbolic gestures”.
South Africa’s ruling party has lost its moral and intellectual capacity to claim the mantle of leadership. The country’s economy won’t recover unless new political alignments emerge.
Attacks on the South African Reserve Bank and events in India that led to the exit of the governor of the country’s central bank are a warning that banks aren’t immune from political meddling.
Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State