By Mukelani Dimba
On 19 June 2014, 490 Members of Parliament will hear President Jacob Zuma give the State of the Nation Address, which will also mark the opening of the Fifth Parliament. On 21 May 2014, these individuals stood before Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng to swear or affirm their ...
by Steven Friedman
IF THE public debate is a guide, we are again wasting a "crisis" — this time, the fact that the economy shrank by 0.6% in the first quarter, apparently because of the platinum strike. The phrase "don’t waste a good crisis" is commonly used. But few who ...
By Raymond Suttner
When we evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our democracy we need to move beyond criticising our experience of parliamentarism – because political self-realisation can be understood in going beyond the periodic election of representatives.
Indeed the treatment of democracy as equivalent to representative democracy is relatively ...
By RAYMOND SUTTNER
Amongst the symptoms of these sentiments is the development of more than one unity initiative: the most organisationally powerful one introduced by NUMSA. When announcing that it would not support ANC in the 2014 elections NUMSA indicated it would take steps to initiate a united front. The ...
Ebrahim Fakir
With South Africa’s 2014 elections done and dusted, it’s an appropriate time to consider serious electoral reform or, at the bare minimum, to introduce a base threshold of support that parties must receive if the pure proportional representation system is to be retained. It is almost intolerable that ...
By Trudi Makhaya
Amongst my mostly corporate and entrepreneurial social circle, my previous job in government was a source of some fascination and bemusement. But of all my duties in that life, being summoned to Cape Town to account to Parliament had to be one that seemed most other-worldly. The ...
By Dale T. McKinley · 11 May 2014
No sooner had the final results of the recently concluded 2014 national elections been announced than President Zuma gave a predictably self-congratulatory speech lauding the result as “the will of all the people”. The reality however is that the ANC’s victory came ...
By Richard Calland
Cyril Ramaphosa is likely to assume more power, but this may make him too much of a threat, writes Richard Calland.
What now? Another Zuma administration, that’s what. Cabinet-making is probably any head of government’s most significant task. And as there is no such thing – perhaps ...
Loren Treisman
Technology is helping people express their concerns, but more needs to be done before its full potential is realised.
On May 7 in South Africa the "born frees" – those born after the apartheid era – will be voting for the first time.
Twenty years since the start ...
By Anthony Butler
IF THE Democratic Alliance (DA) performs poorly in next week’s national and provincial elections, we are likely to hear a familiar litany of complaints. State resources, we will be told, were abused to smooth the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) path to victory. ANC-aligned businesses channelled financial resources ...