inside politics

Analysis of and commentary on South African politics.

7 March 2012

Learning the hard way

FEATURE: When Jackie Selebi was appointed police commissioner in 1999, and despite much evidence suggesting his appointment would be problematic – least of all that he was first an foremost an Mbeki loyalist, not an expert – the decison was widely welcomed by the mainstream press. Today, Selebi’s successor, Bheki Cele, is also disgraced and so it worth asking: what did the press say about his 2009 appointment? Did they praise it? Or where they critical? Because the problem with the appointment was essentially the same. Have a read and find out.

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6 March 2012

Tolls back then and why this time it’s different; or is it?

FEATURE: History, they say, repeats itself. The current and widespread discontent concering the introduction of eTolling in Gauteng might seem without precedent in the new South Africa but cast your gaze a little further back into the past and you will see the issue has raised its head before. Things then, as now, were much the same: a nationalist government, failing infrastructure and an incapable state. The plan failed back then but we can surely learn a lesson or two from it. Or can we? Charles van Onselen relates the story and asks the questions we should be thinking about today.

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6 March 2012

On loss

SERIES: The Thing About is a weekly Business Day column designed to discuss democratic ideas, ideals, values and principles from a liberal perspective. Loss is as much a part of democratic life as victory but a far harder outcome to accept. And many resist it, long after it is no longer negotiable. Not accepting it is, of course, one thing but to try change the rules in order to negate it, far more problematic behaviour.

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5 March 2012

The language of meritocracy

FEATURE: To what degree is South Africa a country that embraces and embodies excellence? That is, to what degree are those things fundamental to a meritocracy inherent to South African public discourse and its political culture? In the piece below the DA’s Federal Chair, Wilmot James, looks at this question and tries to understand both where we stand as country in this regard and what the Democratic Alliance has to do, in order to better embrace excellence and its benefits.

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2 March 2012

The Imaginarium of Marius Fransman

FEATURE: ANC Western Cape Provincial Chairperson Marius Fransman has written an article that, well, it’s quite something. I was going to say hilarious, and I did laugh heartedly at much of it but then, on reflection, decided that ‘hilarious’ did not do adequate justice to some of the remarkable gobbledygook contained within it. Mixed metaphors, mangled grammar, poor language, bad spelling – it reads like the wildly-impassioned speech a maniacal super villain spits forth, mad with an over-the-top power lust, just before he inevitably duffs his whole grand plan and is captured, all red in the face and puffing, like someone who has been locked in a sauna for a day and a half. Anyway, you should read it first, before reading this. You can find it here. Oh, and also make a note of it. This is going to be one of those humdingers you are going to want to recall from the archives come 2014.

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2 March 2012

187 votes: How Julius Malema was elected

FEATURE: So Julius Malema has been expelled from the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) and while South Africa reflects on what this all means, it is worth taking a trip back in time, to April 2008, when Malema was first elected President of the league. Why? Well, his election had all the tell-tale signs of what was to follow. And, with the benefit of hindsight, it makes for interesting reading. In the end there were just 187 votes in it but what an important 187 votes those proved to be. Here, then, is a brief re-cap of the ANCYL’s 2008 elective conference, as told by South Africa’s media.

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29 February 2012

A cesspool of negativity

SERIES: A good quote can hold within it a thousand separate insights, just as surely as some poorly constructed thought can reveal someone as a fool. Quotable Quotes looks at what is said, what was said and, on occasion, how the two compare. Today, the ANC regularly accuses the DA of ‘opposing for the sake of opposing’ but what of its record in opposition, in the Western Cape legislature? Does it practice what it preaches or, like so much the ANC says and does, is that criticism little more than hypocritical posturing?

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28 February 2012

A desolate shack no more

SERIES: The instantaneous and dramatic nature of current affairs lends itself to a kind of historical amnesia, one where the captivating nature of those things unfolding today, causes one to forget the bigger picture. From the Archives aims to put forward the odd reminder that, more often than not, history is merely repeating itself. In all likelihood, somewhere, someone has already experienced and commented on those all-consuming issues that appear to have materialised only yesterday.

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28 February 2012

On offence

SERIES: The Thing About is a weekly Business Day column designed to discuss democratic ideas, ideals, values and principles from a liberal perspective. In this column, a look at the idea of offence – something so often evoked by the insecure and hyper-sensitive to try and suppress those views and opinions with which they disagree; usually, ironically, in the name of tolerance.

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21 February 2012

On the Couch: Tim Harris

VIDEO SERIES: Every now and then Inside Politics will get a key political roleplayer ‘on the couch’, to talk about the politics behind politics – essentially, a conversation about the mechanics of current affairs and the kind of developments and issues that don’t always make it into the mainstream media. In this edition, we talk to DA Shadow Minister for Finance, Tim Harris MP, about the ideological confusion that currently defines the ANC’s approach to the economy.

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20 February 2012

A known unknown?

SERIES: Hundreds of thousands of words are printed in South Africa’s mainstream media everyday, so many that the occassional perculiarity often passes by unnoticed. Take a moment to think about it though and the perculiar can be quite revealing. Between the Lines highlights the odd and incidental in the news. We ask the questions, you provide the answers.

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20 February 2012

The straw man fallacy

SERIES: South African public discourse is awash with bad logic and poor reasoning. So much so that much of it is not even identified, let alone criticised. Illogical Logic is a series designed to look at the different kinds of crooked thinking out there, to identify and understand each in turn and, hopefully, to help promote better argument. In this edition we look at the Straw Man.

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20 February 2012

On sophistry

SERIES: The Thing About is a weekly Business Day column designed to discuss democratic ideas, ideals, values and principles from a liberal perspective. Today, sophistry – the kind of crooked thinking that uses logical fallacy and deception to make an argument seem stronger – what is its nature, and how best does one indentify it?

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20 February 2012

On the Couch: Mmusi Maimane

VIDEO SERIES: Every now and then Inside Politics will get a key political roleplayer ‘on the couch’, to talk about the politics behind politics – essentially, a conversation about the mechanics of current affairs and the kind of developments and issues that don’t always make it into the mainstream media. We start with a discussion with DA National Spokesperson Mmusi Maimane about the state of South Africa’s media.

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19 February 2012

Church and state?

SERIES: Hundreds of thousands of words are printed in South Africa’s mainstream media everyday, so many that the occassional perculiarity often passes by unnoticed. Take a moment to think about it though and the perculiar can be quite revealing. Between the Lines highlights the odd and incidental in the news. We ask the questions, you provide the answers.

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13 February 2012

On status

SERIES: The Thing About is a weekly Business Day column designed to discuss democratic ideas, ideals, values and principles from a liberal perspective. The column below looks at the idea of status and asks, does the fact that someone qualifies for a title mean they have in effect achieved some status in the eyes of others? Or is status, like respect, earned? Very often status-seekers simply assume the former, never pausing to question the possibility that the latter might, in fact, hold true.

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12 February 2012

Vigilance and McCarthyism

SERIES: The instantaneous and dramatic nature of current affairs lends itself to a kind of historical amnesia, one where the captivating nature of those things unfolding today, causes one to forget the bigger picture. From the Archives aims to put forward the odd reminder that, more often than not, history is merely repeating itself. In all likelihood, somewhere, someone has already experienced and commented on those all-consuming issues that appear to have materialised only yesterday.

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10 February 2012

‘Proper accountability’

SERIES: Weasel Words: “Words of convenient ambiguity, or a statement from which the meaning has been sucked or retracted,” [Brewer’s Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable]. A great deal of what is said – particularly those contentious statements made in response to sensitive issues – obscure meaning with vagueness and ambiguity. And Weasel words – empty clichés and jargon – often the mechanisms by which this is achieved. Weasel Word Watch is series dedicated to highlighting this kind of misdirection, with a view to cutting through the obfuscation.

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9 February 2012

The ad hominem attack

SERIES: South African public discourse is awash with bad logic and poor reasoning. So much so that much of it is not even identified, let alone criticised. Illogical Logic is a series designed to look at the different kinds of crooked thinking out there, to identify and understand each in turn and, hopefully, to help promote better argument. We start with the ad hominem attack, possibly the crudist kind of sophistry.

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6 February 2012

On prejudice

SERIES: The Thing About is a weekly Business Day column designed to discuss democratic ideas, ideals, values and principles from a liberal perspective. Today, a look at prejudice. Prejudice appears in many forms, but it is at its most insidious when it denies its own existence. One has a duty to identify that kind of prejudice for what it is, but it also constitutes a danger to rational criticism – because, unless properly done, almost anyone can then be accused of prejudice.

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4 February 2012

[In]famous ANC promises 1: free media

SERIES: A good quote can hold within it a thousand separate insights, just as surely as some poorly constructed thought can reveal someone as a fool. Quotable Quotes looks at what is said, what was said and, on occasion, how the two compare. In this edition: Believe it or not, the ANC has not always advocated for state regulation. Indeed, there was a time when it spoke out against the very idea.

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2 February 2012

Zuma on Jesus and democracy

SERIES: A good quote can hold within it a thousand separate insights, just as surely as some poorly constructed thought can reveal someone as a fool. Quotable Quotes looks at what is said, what was said and, on occasion, how the two compare. In this edition a look at Jacob Zuma’s ANC centenary speech and how it contradicts some of his earlier ideas on Jesus and the power of the voters.

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30 January 2012

On generalisation

SERIES: The Thing About is a weekly Business Day column designed to discuss democratic ideas, ideals, values and principles from a liberal perspective. Today we look at generalisation. Is there any value to generalising? What is its relationship to the particular? When is generalisation helpful and when is it a hinderance? And what happens when that relationship is not well understood?

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26 January 2012

On critics and criticism

ARTICLE: Related to (and in many places overlapping with) this article, the piece below appeared in Rapport this past Sunday. Again, it is on criticism and critics, but it does have something aditional to say about pessimism and how it relates to critical comment. From those interested in the Afrikaans version, it can be found here.

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26 January 2012

Who critiques the critics?

FEATURE: This is a piece appeared on Politicsweb a few days ago. It focuses on the work of Pierre de Vos, a regular critic of the DA’s style and tone, and asks the question: What of his style and tone? Does his own tone measure up to the standard he sets for others?

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13 January 2012

The emperor has no clothes

FEATURE: Recently it has been argued by a number of commentators that Preisdent Jacob Zuma’s dull and dreary speeches are not the product of ineptitude, but just, well, the way things are done in the ANC. This article responds to that argument by focusing on one of its advocates and a particular piece from the Daily Maverick.

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