Why there’s not much hope for Cope

This op-ed was written on the eve of South Africa’s elections in April.
When Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa announced they were “serving divorce papers” on the African National Congress (ANC), their political home, there was a frenzy of speculation that this would result in a tectonic shift in South Africa’s political and electoral [...]

Debunking the Daily Mail’s doomsayer

On Sunday 29 March, a devastating article by Peter Hitchens on Jacob Zuma and South Africa’s future was published in Britain’s Daily Mail. Couched in a sickening, sensationalist discourse swirling with racist and colonialist undertones, the story employed gross misrepresentation, selective truth-telling, distortion and stereotyping to depict South Africa as about to collapse into the [...]

Zim unity government: Thabo’s toxic legacy

Part of Thabo Mbeki’s toxic legacy could well prove to be the disastrous unity deal he engineered between Zanu-PF and the MDC in Zimbabwe.
Democracy has been defeated in Zimbabwe, and this largely due to Mbeki’s willingness to legitimise Mugabe’s tyrannous regime through his chairing of the power-sharing negotiations. It was a marriage doomed from the [...]

New party about power not policy

Karima Brown, the Business Day’s political  editor, writes a devastating analysis of Mosiuoa Lekota’s moves to break away from the ANC. On the motivations of the formation of the new party she writes that:
It points to a group of powerful individuals who accessed state resources so that they could rule in perpetuity. The move to form a new [...]

Ta ta Thabo, hello Kgalema

Our new caretaker president has been announced and, contrary to what the rumour mill was saying, it will be Kgalema Motlanthe and not Baleka Mbete. Which is just as well, since he kind of looks more like a caretaker than she does.
Jokes aside, there’s no doubt a sigh of collective relief about the choice — [...]

Firing Mbeki ensures imminence of ANC split

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Zuma’s coterie, drunk on power, might think they’ve got the upper hand in their battle against Mbeki. But by ignominiously firing a man well known for his pride, they are simply hastening the demise of the ANC as we know it. They have provided the impetus required for the inevitable wrenching of [...]

How the ANC will push out the President

The latest M&G’s lead story outlines how the ANC plans to get rid of Mbeki. Apparently they do not want go through the conventional route of a parliamentary impeachment or vote of no confidence for fears they will be obligated to call an early election which the party feels too unprepared for.
Instead, it has been [...]

Mbeki’s Zim negotiations were self-serving

This piece was written (and published on Thought Leader) before the announcement that a deal had been brokered between Zanu PF and the MDC. What remains to be seen, however, is whether or not this will truly result in Zimbabwean’s people democratic will being respected. The details that have thus far been outlined about the [...]

Zim: Thabo tries again

According to the Business Day, Thabo Mbeki has gone to Harare to try and resucitate the collapsed talks between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
Read about this pointless attempt here.
Smart sanctions, anyone?

Our president’s arms deal bribe

For years I’ve suspected that the president was implicated in the arms deal’s corruption scandal. Ducking and diving, the president has clearly had much to hide. Today, however, we have more than conjecture (and an incriminating encrypted fax the DA has been in possession of) to go on. The Sunday Times bravely broke the story [...]