Out With The Old: Exploring the Myth of the ‘New’ South Africa
Sisonke Msimang In the past few weeks there has been much consternation about the de facto existence of the dompas in the Western Cape community of Worcester. The dreaded dompas was a humiliating fact of life in apartheid South Africa; my father had one and his memories of it are vivid and painful. The […]
SA’s Political End-Games
Political assassinations appear to be on the increase in post-apartheid South Africa – especially in more recent years – with researcher David Bruce suggesting as many as 450 people have been killed since the advent of democracy. Intra-party violence has increased in KwaZulu-Natal since the Inkatha Freedom Party’s splintering of the National Freedom Party. […]
Sisulu’s War of the Ages Begins
In 2005, early in her in her first term as Minister of Housing, Lindiwe Sisulu announced that the state had resolved to ‘eradicate slums’ by 2014. This was a time when the technocratic ideal had more credibility than it does now and officials and politicians often spoke, with genuine conviction, as if it were […]
ANC: Bleeding from the Bottom
Don’t you get fucked off with all these pop-up political and economic analysts? They emerge, like verbal one-person flash mobs, every time the news agenda gets a little too complicated for journalists to follow. So instead of reading a court judgment and reporting on it, editorial teams wheel in someone with Professor or Doctor […]