Keyword: government

Six Reasons Why Rushed Cadre Deployment is Bad for the Cabinet and for the Country

Picture: Transport Minister Dipuo Peters and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa during a Cabinet Lekgotla at the Presidential Guest House in Pretoria on 10 June 2014 courtesy GCIS/GovernmentZA/flickr Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen - The African National Congress has recently launched its Imvuselelo (Revival) Campaign. At the launch, President Jacob Zuma indicated it means a “back to basics campaign”. The campaign aims to reconnect with voters and drive membership. The campaign requires new members to swear an oath that they did not join the ANC to advance personal material interests and for branches to conduct community work each Friday. Iterations of this campaign using the same name have been around...

What the State's Response to the Anger of Protesting Communities Is Not Telling Us

Picture: BBC World Service Ibrahim Steyn - As many poor working class communities continue to protest against the post-apartheid state’s failure to meet their material expectation of democracy, the only real difference between Mbeki and Zuma’s responses to the protesting voices is that whereas the former has been callous the latter seems more sympathetic. The fact that Mbeki hardly commiserated with protesting communities during his tenure and obstinately denied that South Africa was experiencing a so-called "service...

Opening Editorial: A Decade of Denial

Picture: Ismail Farouk Fazila Farouk - The anniversary of South Africa’s decade of democracy signalled a turning point in the way many South Africans view this country. Since then we’ve been treated to a gaggle of critiques measuring the gains of our democracy. The overall conclusion has been that it was a decade of poor gains. A decade of missed opportunities. A decade marked by a paucity of ideas about how to achieve real transformation, and most alarming of all, a decade of denial. Extreme denial...