Powerful lobby groups regularly sound alarm bells when the torpid rate of land reform fleetingly raises the possibility of land expropriation and, with it, the spectre of the violation of white farmers’ property rights. In reality, it is black, rural, poor South Africans who are already being deprived of the right to own property, even…
Two mainstream media companies have turned the Oscar Pistorius case into an opportunity to ruminate on the perils of post-white rule. Time magazine and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) have both in their recent coverage used Pistorius’s defence to weigh in on the South African “culture of violence”. It is notable that these media companies…
Xolela Mangcu in his latest book Biko – A Biography writes about a “big-chief syndrome” that exists among the current ruling elite, in which followers are placed at the mercy of the “chief”. South Africans arguably suffer as much as politicians from big-chief syndrome, in that we imbue leaders with inordinate power. This has to…
As assault charges are laid against the police in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre, the outrageous reality is that torture is still not criminalised in South Africa. A draft law called the Prevention and Combating of Torture of Persons Bill is before parliament but far from adoption. The relevant parliamentary committee has postponed the…
The recent fiasco with the Sexual Offences Act should serve as an alert about continuing problems dating from before the act’s adoption in 2007 and that have still not received parliament’s attention. The Western Cape High Court in May upheld a finding that meant the courts could not pass sentences for 29 crimes for which…
Dr Mathole Motshekga, ANC chief whip, at the end of June wrote in ANC Today that, “parliament survives on the confidence and respect the public have in it, without (which) its dignity and integrity is eroded”. The context was Cope leader Mosiuoa Lekota sticking to his guns that President Jacob Zuma had violated his oath…
It is a no-brainer that a commission without commissioners ceases to operate. But, by the second half of May, the Commission on Gender Equality (CGE) had only two commissioners left, with terms expiring before June 7. So it was déjà vu at the CGE: in 2006-2007, the CGE had no commissioners, for which the blame…
Almost exactly three years ago, Jacob Zuma addressed the last ANC rally before the election on April 22 2009, which returned the ANC as ruling party and made him president of the country. He spoke about everything from education to crime before he identified two institutions that required “transformation”: the judiciary and the media. Just…
‘Race’* is an overused concept in South African discourses that frequently hides more than it reveals. Therefore, it remains imperative to scrutinise the particular historical context in which ‘race’ is wielded. When we discern how ‘race’ is applied to maintain or expand power, we can resist attempted reactivations of the apartheid template and disrupt ‘whiteness’…
Cynicism permeated the atmosphere at Parliament’s latest round of public hearings on the Protection of State Information Bill (POSIB), ringing alarm bells about increasing hostility emanating from parliamentarians towards civil society. While the interaction should be rigorous, as different views are tested, the mere hosting of public hearings should not in itself be contentious in…
