CONSTITUTIONAL COMMENTARY AND EVENTS
ARTICLES AND STATEMENTS
ARTICLE: DISRUPTION AND DIVERSION
State capture, repurposing of state institutions, shadow state, mafia state…
STATEMENT: NO ROOM FOR HATE
An eruption on social media about the origins of coloured people amongst a range of diabolical claims has made headlines in The Citizen (01/06/2017).
STATEMENT: WHO IS GETTING RICHER AND WHO IS GETTING POORER?
Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) has just released the most recent employment statistics. The unemployment rate now stands at a 14-year high of 27.7%. If those who have stopped looking for work are included, the rate is a staggering 36.4%!
This tragic and disconcerting news is being drowned out by the “bigger” stories of state capture, leaked Gupta emails and other corruption and mismanagement in state-owned enterprises like Eskom and SAA. These stories have one golden thread running through them: mega enrichment of a few by any corrupt means necessary, using public funds and usurping state power for individual gain.
PODCASTS
SUBMISSIONS
SPEECHES
EVENTS
ARTICLE: THE BRACKENFELL BOIL
Every now and then a boil appears on the 26-year-old face of the New South Africa. One such boil erupted on 6 October in Senekal – and another earlier this week at Brackenfell High School in the Cape. These ugly eruptions may reflect more than just a passing hormonal imbalance: they could indicate a deeper underlying toxicity that might threaten the whole body politic.
ARTICLE: HIGH NOON IN SENEKAL
The long-simmering crisis of farm murders has come to a head following the murder on 1 October of a 21-year-old farm manager Brendin Horner at a farm outside Paul Roux in the Free State.
Horner’s body was found tied to a pole and the 21-year-old had injuries to the face and neck.
Only two days later police arrested two suspects, Sekola Piet Matlaletsa and Sekwetje Isaiah Mahlamba, in a township near Paul Roux. Blood-stained clothes and shoes were found in their possession.
ARTICLE: PRESIDENT RAMAPHOSA’S DOUBLETHINK HERITAGE DAY STATEMENT
In his dystopian novel “1984” George Orwell introduced us to the concept of “doublethink” – which he described as –
“…the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary.”
We saw examples of doublethink in President Ramaphosa’s statement on Heritage Day last week.
CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
- Equality
- Non-racialism
- Gender Rights
- The Constitution
- The Rule of Law
- Multiparty Democracy
- Personal Rights
- Cultural, Religious and Language Rights
- Freedom of Expression and Political Rights
- Social and Economic Rights
- Property Rights
- Education
- Access To The Courts, Information And Fair Adminstration