Consumers received another shock when electricity tariffs for the next two years were hiked after the National Regulator of SA (Nersa) said it found errors in its price determination announced in January.
Writing in his weekly newsletter, From the Desk of a President, President Cyril Ramaphosa called on South Africans to work together to build a society where corruption is unable to take root.
The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system got underway.
In a wandering speech to the United Nations, which contained no shortage of false claims and contradictions, US President Donald Trump dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and blasted wind farms and other renewable energy projects.
EFF leader, Julius Malema, was found guilty of the unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition, discharging a firearm in a public space, failure to take reasonable precautions to avoid dangers to persons and reckless endangerment. Calling the decision “racist”, he has vowed to fight the sentence.
The KwaZulu-Natal government of provincial unity (GPU) was on shaky ground amid growing calls from within the ANC for the party’s withdrawal from the coalition government. Compromising the IFP, DA and ANC, the KZN GPU has faced turbulence since its formation in June 2024.
The factional fights amongst the police top brass were again brought into sharp relief at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, further eroding public confidence in SAPS’ ability to deal with the rising crime levels.
The Gauteng Division of the High Court of Pretoria gave former president Jacob Zuma 60 days to pay back nearly R29-million, plus interest, in state money that was unlawfully used to pay his legal fees and related expenses.
Ever since he first entered politics, Julius Malema has – like Donald Trump in America – been a divisive and controversial figure, a fact he has been only too happy to exploit to his advantage. Loathed by one section of the public, worshipped by another, over the years, a great deal of speculation has whirled around who he is and what drives his ambition. Many questions have also arisen as to how he has been able to underpin his lavish lifestyle. In this compelling, convincing and meticulously researched book, investigative reporters Micah Reddy and Pauli Van Wyk tear away the veil to reveal the unsettling truth.
Although not intended as a biography (Malema, unsurprisingly, refused to have anything to do with the authors), the book does give a brief resume of his career. Brought up in poverty, Malema became politicised at an early age. At school, he did not do well academically, although he would later explain this away by saying it was because he was too busy with politics. His less-than-stellar academic performance in no way dampened his unwavering thirst for power. He quickly made his presence felt. His personal charisma and larger-than-life personality went hand in hand with an instinctive feel for the masses which saw him rapidly rise through the political ranks until he eventually became president of the ANC Youth League.
As a member of the new elite, Malema openly displayed the self-regard and sense of entitlement that has become the trademarks of far too many of post-colonial Africa’s leaders. Like many others, too, he would use his new position to benefit from government tenders; in his case, mostly in Limpopo.
Malema was initially a fervent supporter of Jacob Zuma, vociferously defending the then Deputy President when he was charged with rape and playing an important role in his campaign to unseat Thabo Mbeki as president of the ANC. His outspokenness soon got him into trouble with the ANC hierarchy, however, and, despite his avowals of permanent support, he would later turn on Zuma after he expelled the young firebrand from the ANC for fomenting divisions and bringing the party into disrepute (ironically, Zuma would later suffer a similar fate).
Determined not to be silenced, Malema responded by forming the Economic Freedom Front (EFF), which advocated the radical redistribution of land and the nationalisation of mines. He was joined by his sidekick and former deputy president of the ANCYL, Floyd Shivambu, who would also become implicated in his share of shady financial and business activities (Shivambu would later deal a big blow to the EFF when, in a headline-grabbing move, he defected to Zuma’s newly formed MK Party. He did not last long there). As the undisputed leader and dominant member of the party, Malema was now able to unleash his demagogic talent freely.
Despite his pro-poor stance and professed aversion to Western capitalism, Malema has displayed few, if any, principles when it comes to accumulating wealth. Like many a populist leader, he has not been afraid to mix his political interests with his business ones or to use his political connections to bankroll both his party and himself. The proceeds from the latter went into luxury items, fleets of cars and a multitude of mansions, farms and properties.
Malema did his best to cover his tracks, but the press soon got wind of his activities and various investigations followed. Despite all the evidence that has been uncovered showing how he has benefited from his back-room deals, Malema has proved singularly adept at exploiting South Africa’s weak justice system and avoiding accountability.
In this deeply researched piece of investigative reporting, the authors provide a lengthy and detailed charge sheet of these. Looming large among the many cases is the scandal surrounding the Venda-based VBS Mutual Bank. A community-based bank, focusing on serving people with modest incomes, it collapsed in 2018 after being looted by corrupt municipal officials, middlemen, politicians, auditors, and even members of the Venda royalty, who had defrauded it of around R2 billion. As a result, many poor and elderly rural folk lost their life savings. Needless to say, both Malema and Shivambu were implicated in the unfolding scandal.
So far, the two politicians have managed to elude being brought to book for these and other corruption allegations, although investigations continue.
Engrossing and revelatory, Malema: Money. Power. Patronage provides a mountain of information on how Malema and other self-styled revolutionaries in the EFF have managed to enrich themselves, all in the name of the people. In doing so, the book also lifts the lid on the amoral careerism and licensed larceny that have become a defining characteristic of South African politics. Sadly, far too many members of the former liberation movements seem to have abandoned the fundamental values that first nourished them and learnt to tolerate the intolerable…
Published by UJ Press
In this well-researched, scholarly overview, the author provides detailed insights into the factors that led to the 2017 overthrow of the long-time Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe. One of the major focus points of the book is the often-overlooked role gender played in this and other military coups.
Tendi argues that Grace Mugabe – often sneeringly referred to as Gucci Grace because of her expensive tastes and extravagant lifestyle – was deliberately cast, by the coup plotters, as a scheming femme fatale, who had taken advantage of her husband’s frail health and declining mental state to position herself to take over the reins of power. This scapegoating of the First Lady was used as a cover for the general’s real motivations for the coup – to ensure that their preferred candidate, the recently sacked deputy president, Emmerson Mnangagwa (who they believed would protect their interests and positions. Mugabe was, reputedly, planning to get rid of some of them, and his rebuff of the generals when they sought a meeting with him to discuss their grievances was, undoubtedly, one of the main catalysts for the coup), would become president and not Mugabe’s own choice for successor – Dr Sydney Sekeramayi.
To bolster the case, as well as making it more appealing to the rank and file, the coup leaders portrayed Mnangagwa as a strong, bold, decisive, masculine figure as opposed to the more reserved, unassuming and, by implication, less manly, Sekeremayi. Mugabe was, likewise, feminised as “an old man” who had lost much of his former charisma and power and was, therefore, no longer up to ruling.
In addition to this, Tendi successfully demolishes the argument, put out at the time, that Mugabe’s overthrow was somehow not really a coup, in the strict sense of its definition, or that it differed markedly from how others had played out elsewhere in Africa. Because of Mugabe’s widespread unpopularity, both within and outside the country, coupled with the general feeling he had long overstayed his welcome in office, the AU and most Western leaders were happy to go along with this fiction. As a result, there was minimal public condemnation. There were even suggestions that Britain, for one, may have had a hand in what transpired or at least given tacit support to the Mnangagwa faction. The book includes personal testimonies and much interesting anecdotage from diplomats and politicians, in this connection.
Sadly, any hopes that the coup would usher in a better Zimbabwe would soon be dashed. As the author observes, most coups by generals tend to have conservative outcomes, and Zimbabwe proved no exception. There has been little meaningful change to the political status quo. Women’s participation in politics has declined, and there has been further repression and ongoing human rights abuses.
As Associate Professor of African Politics at the University of Oxford, Tendi has done his research, and his book includes a great deal of revealing behind-the-scenes detail. The most vivid parts of the book are those describing the fractured civil-military relations, and Mugabe’s failure to address or immediately deal with the generals’ grievances, an uncharacteristic lapse in judgment which resulted in the ageing president’s downfall. The author’s academic background does, however, occasionally show through in the numerous references to other scholars’ work and some rather dry theorising, which tends to slow down the pace of the narrative.
That said, The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe: Gender, Coups and Diplomats remains an important and engaging account of a pivotal moment in Zimbabwe’s recent history.
One of the more worrying features of the shaky era we are living in has been a rising tide of authoritarianism, accompanied, in some instances, by a resurrection of many old white supremacist tropes, which date back to Charles Darwin’s time. It was Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, who came up with the concept of eugenics, which popularised the view that races were real entities and that different races were unequal. His ideas gained widespread currency and were supported by many prominent figures, including Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. On a more sinister note, they would also be latched onto by Hitler and the Nazis with their endless preoccupation with “the Jewish question”- how to rid Europe of the Jews – that led, ultimately, to the gas chambers.
The horrors of the Holocaust forced white supremacist ideas into retreat, but they didn’t disappear altogether. South Africa, for one, instituted its policy of apartheid that centred on its notions of separate racial cultures and separate racial frameworks. Behind all this was the belief that whites were inherently superior to blacks and should effectively control the reins of power. This line of reasoning led to the Group Areas Act, under which 3,5 million African and ‘Çoloured’ people were forcibly removed from their homes to make way for whites.
As usual, however, it is to America that we must turn for the big story about race and politics. Nowadays, geneticists say there is little scientific evidence to support theories of race difference. This hasn’t stopped them from finding a new protagonist in Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, whose obsession with refugees, immigrants and declining birth rates has seen the normalisation of what were once regarded as fringe views. Their fears about America being swamped by violent, criminal gangs and getting engulfed in ethnic conflict are, in turn, directly linked to populist Great Replacement thinking – the conspiracy narrative, first espoused by the French author Renaud Camus, that there is a secret plot, masterminded by some mysterious elite, to replace white populations in white-majority countries.
The growing influence of social media has led to a proliferation of alt-right sites and the widespread dissemination of their views, as well as the spreading of doomsday scenarios of a looming white genocide. (with some – including Donald Trump himself – pointing to what is allegedly happening in South Africa, even though these claims are not backed up by any solid evidence). Underlying a lot of it is a profound nastiness which has led, at the extreme end, to the emergence of lone white-male killers who hope that their violent actions will provoke civil war.
South African-born author, Gavin Evans, who grew up under the old National Party regime, with its policy of “separate development”, has made an in-depth study of this subject. In his eloquent, compelling and, at times, alarming book, he succeeds superbly in teasing out the links between the old ideas about eugenics and today’s Great Replacement theories. His conclusions are, by no means, all doom and gloom, however. Despite the growth of the alt-right, the frequency of race-motivated murders, the revival of race science and the election of right-wing politicians, research has shown that racial prejudice is, in fact, declining, especially where communities have become more integrated and people are exposed to other cultures, ideas and ways of life. There are still, however, powerful forces pushing the idea of “race realism”.
Topical, relevant and full of insights, White Supremacy deserves to be read by a wide audience.
published by Bloomsbury.
We live in an age of economic anxiety and instability. The cost of living continues to rise, real wages are in decline, and jobs are becoming increasingly scarce. Many people feel gloomy and fearful about the future. Trust is in deficit.
In this shrewd, thoughtful and hard-hitting polemic, author Ash Sarkar tackles the obvious question: how did we get here? Her essential conclusion is that we have allowed ourselves to become victims in a classic case of misdirection. Instead of confronting the big issue of our day – the unprecedented transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens and consumers to the very rich, the huge corporations and the oligarchs we have allowed ourselves to become sucked into a phony game of grievance politics. The whole concept of “culture wars” has been deliberately stoked to redirect attention away from the structural causes of our current economic hardships towards more nebulous feelings of cultural resentment. In this scenario, various minority groups are blamed for all the world’s ills.
An obvious example is the transgender issue, where the sexual leanings of a tiny minority of society are blown out of all proportion and presented as a form of contagion which will undermine the moral welfare of the majority. In a similar vein, we have the promotion of conspiracy theories, like the Great Replacement narrative – so popular amongst alt-right groups – which postulates that there is some sort of sinister plot to replace slow-breeding whites with immigrants from other racial groups.
Politicians like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage have become experts at whipping up fear and speculation and turning these once-fringe issues into mainstream ones. Other politicians have displayed a similar cynicism and hypocrisy. While professing concern for the poor, they are willing partners in a system that continues to enrich the extremely wealthy.
To an extent, the left has made it easier for them. Rather than looking at the larger issues facing society, they have become obsessed with policing what people say and whether it can be construed as an assault on someone’s personhood. Society has become divided into narrow subcultures, each defending its own turf. We have become mired in niche controversies.
At the other end of the spectrum, right-wing culture warriors seized on this to promote the vision of a ‘forgotten’ majority who have been socially gagged and culturally marginalised because of this focus on minority rights. As the author notes, the most trifling of conflicts get framed within much weightier battles of values, ideologies or identity positions with hundreds of talking heads pontificating about them”(she cites the case of Will Smith slapping the comedian Chris Rock)
Sarkar is a spry, pithy and impressively agile critic, and her well-argued book is very much a call to arms. While not suggesting that we ignore the injustices of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, her main point is that we need to be aware of the tectonic economic and geopolitical shifts that are taking place all around us. At a time when ordinary citizens struggle with financial, health and housing insecurity, a huge wealth grab is taking place right under our noses, which erodes our rights and threatens to impoverish us still further…
Faced with skyrocketing debt, an underperforming economy, and unrealised forecasts, Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana returned to the drawing board after his 2025 Budget, which proposed a 2% VAT increase, was rejected.
Following its poor performance in the 2024 general election, the ANC announced a new reconfigured leadership structure in KwaZulu-Natal – a move which caused a rise in tensions within the party because it favoured President Ramaphosa’s allies.
With some of the Government of National Unity’s (GNU) partners opposing it, Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana’s proposed budget, which included a controversial VAT hike, faced significant parliamentary challenges due to the ANC’s lack of a majority.
In response to the US government’s expulsion of South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, President Cyril Ramaphosa claimed he was not deterred by the recent tensions between the two countries. He believed the historic relationship would “outlive the current bumpy patch.”
EFF leader Julius Malema ignited fresh controversy after leading the “Kill the Boer” struggle song at a Human Rights Day rally. This time, US President Donald Trump entered the fray, lambasting South Africa in a strongly worded statement, thus stoking an already tense atmosphere between the two countries following the recent expulsion of the SA Ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool.
Against the backdrop of President Trump’s punitive tariffs against South Africa, the GNU came unstuck over the National Assembly’s vote on the Budget’s fiscal framework.
Winds of accountability swept through Msunduzi City Hall as a high-level intervention team, led by former Finance MEC Ravi Pillay, began its work.
Just weeks after publicly welcoming a provincial investigation into Msunduzi Municipality and calling for the “best investigators”, Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla asked for the probe to be halted…
In response to mounting pressure against it, the Treasury issued an overnight statement announcing that Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana would be reversing the decision to hike VAT.
In his New Year address, President Cyril Ramaphosa said South Africa had made great progress in 2024. However, there still remains an urgent need to create more jobs, ensure all people receive quality service and fix water supply problems.
ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa broke his silence on the SACP’s decision to contest the 2026 local elections on their own, warning that dismantling the tripartite alliance would “weaken the national democratic movement.” Despite leading the rival MK party, former president Jacob Zuma, meanwhile, demanded that he be reinstated in the ANC by the end of January. The ruling party dismissed his demand as “mischievous.”
The world braced itself for the return of the polarising figure of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States. On the campaign trail, Trump had announced wide-reaching plans, including the mass deportations of immigrants and sweeping tariffs that economists warned could have a drastic effect on the economy. He also threatened to rename the Gulf of Mexico, take over the Panama Canal, make Canada part of the United States and buy Greenland.
In launching his “Masterplan” to tackle the city’s dire state, Msunduzi Municipality Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla finally admitted to what residents have been complaining about for years.
President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a bill allowing for the seizure of land without compensation – a move that put him at odds with some of the other parties in the Government of National Unity.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s SONA address came at a time when South Africa’s relations with Rwanda were souring as security deteriorated in the eastern DR Congo. US President Donald Trump also threatened to cut funding over South Africa’s land policy, which allowed for the confiscation of land without compensation.
As the United States announced new tariffs on steel and aluminium, EU chief Maros Sefcovic said it was a “lose-lose” scenario. “By imposing tariffs, the US will be taxing its own citizens, raising costs for its own business, and fuelling inflation,” he cautioned.
The last-minute cancellation of the 2025 budget speech exposed deep divisions within the fragile Government of National Unity, with the ANC appearing to believe it still held the upper hand after informing coalition partners of the 2% VAT hike at the last moment.
In his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana doubled down on budget costs and put in measures to stimulate growth.
The United States of America elected Donald John Trump as its 47th president, choosing a candidate who has promised to put America on a different path. This decision has significant implications for South Africa.
Former EFF chairperson Dali Mpofu became the latest high-profile member to defect to Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MK Party). The exodus of members was predicted to continue.
Public hearings began on Eskom’s proposed 36,1% tariff hike, amidst widespread concern that the increase will worsen the struggle of already vulnerable South Africans.
Former president Jacob Zuma rejected the ANC’s decision to expel him from the party. Zuma’s problems with the ANC started in December 2023, when he announced he was campaigning for the MK Party.
Thembi Simelane’s reshuffle from Justice Minister to Human Settlements Minister ignited sharp criticism, with opposition parties accusing President Cyril Ramaphosa of political manoeuvring. Simelane has been linked to the VBS scandal.
Ahead of its elective conference, EFF leader Julius Malema declared the Jacob Zuma-led MK Party its “biggest enemy” as senior members of the leftist party continue to defect to it.
Stidy's Eye 