The return of cyclical pessimism

ANTHONY BUTLER | Tribal solidarity and the rise and fall of powers

Optimistic citizens in post-apartheid South Africa initially viewed their new order in linear terms

First published in Business Day 20 February 2026

Gwede Mantashe. Picture: (Freddy Mavunda)

Long-suffering newspaper subscribers often observe that rambling columnists tend to go round and round in circles as they get older. This may reflect a deepening reservoir of experience on which an ageing scribe can draw, or more likely a recycling of tired old ideas by their increasingly feeble mind. However, it may sometimes display a belated realisation that history sometimes moves in cycles rather than along a straight line of progress or decay.

Christian theology is largely responsible for the dominance of a linear view of time, with creation, the fall, redemption and the last judgment occurring sequentially. But cyclical theories have continued to thrive in many non-Western intellectual traditions. Chinese political thought — on which venerable liberation movement sage Gwede Mantashe draws as if consulting an inner mountain range — has elaborated a sophisticated dynastic cycle theory that begins when a founding ruler unifies a territory, and there is a period of prosperity and just rule. This is invariably followed by corruption, fiscal strain and factionalism and, finally, by rebellion and the restoration of order by a new dynasty.

Meanwhile, conceptions of power and time in some African societies have embedded politics in cyclical cosmologies of seasonality, ritual renewal and ancestor veneration, and certain precolonial polities embraced the killing of rulers seen as cosmically exhausted.

The North African Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun, perhaps the greatest scientist of society in the Middle Ages, developed a cyclical theory in which tribal solidarity enables conquest, and a ruling dynasty consolidates power. However, luxury invariably weakens its cohesion, until it declines and is replaced by a new and cohesive tribal force.

Cyclical thinking about democratic advance and backsliding has re-emerged today in response to authoritarian resurgence. Cyclical language of civilisational exhaustion and imperial overstretch has even resurfaced in hilarious neo-Trumpian diatribes about the decline of European civilisation.

Optimistic citizens in post-apartheid South Africa initially viewed their new order in linear terms, commencing with liberation, the establishment of democracy and the forging of a developmental state, and leading ultimately to the creation of a national democratic society.

Today, however, the future is often viewed through a Chinese dynastic cycle lens. Founding legitimacy under Nelson Mandela was followed by an institutional consolidation that embraced social grants and constitutionalism, which was then succeeded by elite factionalisation and corruption, and finally by the erosion of legitimacy. Through Khaldun’s lens, liberation solidarity faded, administrative centralisation became patrimonial, and renewal became difficult without rupture.

Patterns, not prophecies

It is understandable that the optimistic linear projections of 1994 have been supplanted by a more pessimistic cyclical narrative of founding virtue, corruption and erosion. Cycles are just patterns, though, not prophecies.

Newspaper columnists who seem to be losing their marbles may instead be trying to think in both linear and cyclical terms at the same time, though their attempts to describe how repetitive political patterns co-exist with overarching linear narratives may inadvertently summon up visions of a celestial spiral staircase on which we are travelling upwards or downwards while also trudging round and round in circles.

Corruption may be a normal feature of societal change, but institutions can also be renewed. South Africa’s trajectory depends less on destiny than on administrative reform, party restructuring, electoral competition and economic inclusion. Whether renewal or replacement dominates will depend on whether economic stagnation persists, coalition politics stabilises and institutions regain enforcement capacity — and perhaps a little on political leadership and judgment.

Linear theories tend to flourish among political observers when expansion, science or economic growth dominate experience. In that sense the popularity of cyclical thought is itself cyclical, rising when societies experience stagnation, elite conflict and legitimacy crisis, and receding when successful reform or rupture re-establish political order and a credible narrative of linear advance.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

February 6, 2026

A DA dream team?

ANTHONY BUTLER: Hill-Lewis and Sarupen — the dream team

April’s elective conference could usher in batch of younger DA leaders

February 06, 2026 at 05:00 am

First published in Business Day

Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis is adamant it will be "business as usual" in the city during the national shutdown planned by the EFF for next Monday. File photo. — Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis is adamant it will be “business as usual” in the city during the national shutdown planned by the EFF for next Monday. File photo. (Esa Alexander)

The internal politics of the DA has suddenly become uncharacteristically interesting.

In the past, a variety of factors conspired to make it almost impossible to understand the party’s internal dynamics. Only party insiders could reliably recall the difference between the federal leader, the chair of the federal council, and the federal chair.

Even the select group sharing this secret knowledge disagreed about whether the federal leader or chair of the council — currently John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille, respectively — is the more influential figure.

Deputy finance minister Ashor Sarupen. File photo — Deputy finance minister Ashor Sarupen. Picture: (JEFFREY ABRAHAMS/GALLO IMAGES)

A confluence of factors means delegates will elect new leaders to both key offices at the party’s conference in April. Zille is campaigning to be mayor of Joburg in local elections, which are expected later this year, and will probably not accept nomination to serve another term. For his part, Steenhuisen announced this week that he would stand down to spend more time on his ministerial portfolio.

In an era of coalition politics, the DA matters because it will probably be the largest or second-largest party for the next two or three national election cycles, potentially participating routinely in unity governments.

What makes matters more compelling is the spectre of a generational change. EFF generalissimo Julius Malema is 44 years old, in certain respects a terrible infant, but no longer the enfant terrible of South African politics.

Key contenders for key DA offices are deputy finance minister Ashor Sarupen, who is just 37, and sprightly Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, who is two years younger. Long shots such as communications minister Solly Malatsi and the leader of the opposition in Gauteng, Solly Msimang, are only a little older.

There has been lobbying in recent months for a Zille-aligned “dream team” of Hill-Lewis for the federal leadership and Sarupen for the federal council chair. An alternative candidate for federal leader would be Malatsi, who is a capable policymaker and is potentially more appealing than other candidates to younger black voters. However, Malatsi does not yet enjoy widespread support across the party’s base.

There is also Western Cape premier Alan Winde, who is undoubtedly a safe pair of hands but does not represent the exciting change of style and direction the party arguably needs.

Former leader Tony Leon, who has the ear of major party donors, notably endorsed Hill-Lewis very quickly.

Hill-Lewis does not want to cut short his term as a successful Cape Town mayor, but the DA could countenance combined national leadership and municipal office for a year or two — something Zille herself accomplished as leader after 2007, as both mayor and then as provincial premier.

The election to succeed Zille in the federal council is likely to be more competitive. Sarupen is well suited to a low-key interpretation of the federal role, with deep expertise in electoral campaigning and experience in the National Treasury.

The strongest contender he faces could be Dean Macpherson. He is just 40 but became shadow trade, industry & competition minister as early as 2017. He is closely associated with outgoing federal leader Steenhuisen, for whom he has served as campaign manager, and he was appointed public works & infrastructure minister in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government of national unity.

Addressing the Cape Town Press Club yesterday, he set out impressive achievements in the field of construction and infrastructure investment and detailed his apparently successful curtailing of the activities of the so-called construction mafia in KwaZulu-Natal and, more recently, across much of the rest of the country.

Macpherson declined to comment on whether he would accept nomination to the position of chair of the federal council, whether out of procedural propriety or genuine indecision. I for one interpreted his answer as a yes.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

January 23, 2026

Post-truth democracies

ANTHONY BUTLER: Popular instinct rises against elite judgment in post-truth world

First published in Business Day

January 23, 2026

US President Donald Trump speaks during the 56th annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 21 2026. (Picture: DENIS BALIBOUSE/Reuters)

When Donald Trump addressed world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday it felt like the much-heralded “post-truth” world had truly arrived.

The US president strung together a litany of demonstrably false claims, such as that the US “gave Greenland back” to Denmark after World War 2 (it had never become US territory) and that there are no wind farms in China (it generates more wind energy than any other country).

But none of this is entirely new. As the historian Sophia Rosenfeld has observed, democracy has always been about who decides what is true. Representative democracy embodies the promise that citizens, drawing on their lived experience and common sense, can collectively judge what is right and good.

Governing complex societies requires specialised knowledge, such as a mastery of statistics, law and economics, which must be generated and interpreted by experts. Citizens bring values and practical insight to democracy; elites filter information, weigh evidence and transform competing ideas and claims into feasible policies. Democracy does not capitulate to expertise, but it cannot dispense with it either.

For much of the history of Western democracy popular participation grew while states created professional public services, universities trained experts and ostensibly objective methods for justifying policy, such as statistical analysis, acquired the appearance of neutrality.

This settlement always carried the seeds of its own destruction. Whenever knowledge becomes purely technical and self-referential the ability to participate in debate narrows and decisions are taken without popular engagement.

In populist counterreactions, citizens reject the monopolisation of truth by elites and reclaim a place for common sense and ordinary judgment. This can widen participation and break the spell of elite and expert complacency, but it can easily slide into contempt for knowledge, the treatment of evidence as manipulation and the castigation of experts and expertise.

The contemporary “post-truth” moment in the West is therefore not an unprecedented collapse of reason but rather the breakdown of a long-standing and unstable balance. Today’s struggle over what Rosenfeld calls “epistemic authority” — who decides what counts as fact — is worsened by social media’s circulation of information, stripped of context, while algorithms reward novelty, outrage and tribal loyalty.

All democracies, not just Western ones, are vulnerable to “epistemic breakdown”: distrust of institutions, populist suspicion of experts and competing truth claims. Even in the Thembu tribal meetings of Nelson Mandela’s youth, where “all men were to be heard and a decision was taken together as a people”, there was an elite side to the epistemic bargain. The regent would sum up what had been said and form a “consensus” among the diverse opinions. Democracy survives only if truth is filtered, stabilised and institutionalised.

Elites and experts have to accept that knowledge without legitimacy will cause a backlash. Citizens must recognise that popular common sense without evidence and expertise invites manipulation. Democracy fails when either becomes predominant; it survives only when a precarious balance between them is maintained.

The greatest challenge for all democracies — and perhaps especially for newer democracies in middle-income countries such as South Africa — is that the factors that disrupt the uneasy balance between elite judgment and popular instinct are not easy to control or change.

We can in principle regulate social media and contain the potential threats posed by fresh technological developments such as AI. But declining trust in institutions, resentment of elites and the circulation of conspiracies all feed on deeper social divisions, including economic inequality and exclusion from meaningful citizenship.

When material divides widen, institutions lose credibility and become deeply detached from expert knowledge. When citizens inhabit dramatically different material worlds, it becomes impossible to sustain a shared account of reality and expertise starts to look like privilege hiding behind a different name.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

January 9, 2026

Undesirable leaders

ANTHONY BUTLER: No avoiding the glut of putrid political leaders

Does power attract twisted personalities, or does it turn decent people into monsters?

First published in Business Day

January 09, 2026

'Failed politicians never go away. At best they linger and whinge. At worst they re-invent themselves and return to power.' — Power-hungry individuals are certainly drawn to high office, craving status, recognition and control. (123RF/prazis )

As citizens embark on this year’s political journey, they must reckon with the disconcertingly wide array of unappealing political leaders worldwide.

According to contrarian political scientist Brian Klaas, three character traits are widespread among such leaders. The first is Machiavellianism, defined by scheming and interpersonal manipulation.

Machiavellians use deceit, fabrication and inflated credentials to secure positions of authority, and they treat colleagues as pawns rather than human beings.

A second trait is psychopathy — an inability to feel empathy — which is accompanied by impulsivity, recklessness and aggression. Psychopaths can ascend to political office by employing superficial charm: they do not react to the pain of others, but they can mimic empathy to manipulate those they intend to exploit.

Psychopaths’ brains are inactive in regions associated with moral decision-making, allowing them to view people as tools rather than as human beings, facilitating amoral choices, and reducing hesitation when committing monstrous acts.

The third trait, narcissism, is characterised by arrogance and grandiosity. Narcissists are disproportionately drawn to power because they possess an inflated sense of entitlement and seek constant fawning from subordinates. Because they are so confident, they fail to recognise their own incompetence until the system they lead suffers catastrophic failure.

Attracting the corruptible

Why are such traits so widespread among political leaders? Do positions of great power attract twisted personalities, or does political power turn decent people into monsters? As Klaas puts it, does power corrupt, or does it simply attract the corruptible?

Power-hungry individuals are certainly drawn to high office, craving status, recognition and control. They may be unusually effective at navigating party selection processes and political campaigns. Their superficial charm makes them appear likeable and competent, and they are willing to fabricate credentials or lie about their past. They project a sense of certainty easily mistaken for competence.

Humans are hardwired to favour leaders who project strength, masculinity and dominance, which were survival advantages on the prehistoric savanna but can be irrelevant or dangerous today. These archaic biases persist, leading to an irrational preference for physically imposing men — a shirtless Vladimir Putin comes to mind — during perceived security threats, which can be fabricated.

Power also changes incumbents, however humbly their careers may begin. Psychologist Dacher Keltner has shown that gaining power can shift one’s cognitive orientation from cautious to proactive and risk-oriented. Powerful individuals come to believe, wrongly, they can control outcomes, which results in flawed risk assessments and ultimately gambling with people’s lives.

Moreover, as people feel more powerful, they lose social inhibitions, eat impulsively, drive recklessly or engage in sexual affairs, because they no longer worry what others think of them.

Most important of all, even decent political leaders face “dirty hands” problems — moral dilemmas in which they must commit unprincipled acts to achieve a greater moral good.

Machiavellians and narcissists can do wrong easily, untroubled by conscience, but the dilemma has also confronted moral leaders throughout history.

Winston Churchill allowed the HMAS Sydney to be sunk by Nazi forces to protect the secret that the Enigma codes had been cracked, sacrificing lives that could have been saved to help win the wider war.

Abraham Lincoln used bribery to secure the passage of the 13th Amendment, acting dishonestly to end the greater evil of slavery.

Less grandly, and more ubiquitously, politicians everywhere make trades with nefarious funders whose backing is required to win elections. In middle-income countries such as SA, such disturbing moral calculations are routine.

Ultimately, the public expects politicians to be principled, but leaders must perform unprincipled acts to survive and, perhaps, to preserve society.

What appears to be a corrosion of character is frequently just the weight of governing in an inherently immoral situation.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

December 20, 2025

Important ANC Statement on the Preparation of Christmas Lunch

ANTHONY BUTLER: An ANC Christmas lunch plan for the ages

It’s all in the planning, not the plating, nor the eating

First published in BusinessLive, December 19, 2025

The national general council of the ANC has endorsed a strategy and tactics for the preparation of post-colonial Christmas lunch. The movement confirms that the roasting process encapsulates the transition from a state of raw potential to a revolutionary National Democratic Feast (NDF), reaffirming the centrality of the recipe as our lodestar.

The transition from a state of hunger to NDF requires the eradication of the English colonial Christmas template as the sole national norm. We must use this breakthrough to launch a systemic transition that moves beyond the historical injustice of limited menus toward a society in which the people shall share in the country’s abundance. Our vision of the lunch table is characterised by unity in diversity, ensuring that multiple culinary identities based on regional location and cultural heritage are a source of strength for the nation.

This project of thoroughgoing transformation requires a united revolutionary movement of kitchen cadres with the organisational capabilities to strategise, coordinate, and implement the roasting programme.

To realise the vision of a society in which the people shall share in the country’s cholesterol, motive forces, or ingredients, must be mobilised on the platter. The leading force, roast chicken, must be liberated from the bondage of its packaging. A strategic centre comprising a robust alliance of gammon or roast beef, supported occasionally by a leg of lamb, should diversify the industrial base of the meal.

A developmental oven, where available, must realise its strategic role in shaping the contours of development by directing the kitchen’s resources toward a common programme of maintaining a steady heat of 180°C to ensure the progressive realisation of a golden-brown exterior.

The masses of our people must also mobilise braai meats, including boerewors, chops and chicken, as a militant contingent against limited portions. The movement licenses the neocolonial bird, the turkey, as the lodestar of the festive programme in settler households, but only if prepared with aromatics and roasted until the skin is crisp.

The five side dish pillars overcome the spatial distortions of the table by ensuring the creamy potato salad, rice salad, and green salad are distributed as close as possible to the main growth centres. The seven colours coalition programme must be implemented with rice, beetroot, pumpkin, cabbage, and potato salad, and so reflect the multi-class character of our movement. In accordance with our deep roots and connection with the people, particularly in Eastern Cape families, umngqusho shall be elevated as a critical social force within the meal.

In building a developmental starch sector, the state shall direct resources toward the expansion of pap with chakalaka, roast potatoes, and buttered carrots, ensuring these sectors contribute to the growing prosperity of the festive economy.

Sharing the benefits of abundance and hospitality is as important as achieving the roast itself. Therefore, the second phase of our transition will be characterised by the progressive realisation of socio-economic rights in the form of a diverse dessert course. The multi-layered trifle representing the first, second, third, and fourth generations of human rights through layers of custard, jelly, sponge, and fruit. The malva pudding provides a sustainable indigenous resource for the wellbeing of current and future generations. The Christmas cake supports the store-bought sector as an integral part of our mixed economy.

By building a broad consensus on the carving strategy and the allocation of sides, we can confront the challenges of a large family gathering with confidence. The conclusion we reach at the dinner table must be informed by the widest possible input from our people. By building a broad consensus on the carving strategy, we can confront the hunger we face with confidence, as a united movement with a clear vision of the meal ahead.

This satirical statement was issued by UCT professor and culinary provocateur Anthony Butler. He does not cook for the ANC.

December 5, 2025

The G20 revealed a shift in South Africa’s foreign policy

ANTHONY BUTLER: Shifting from China focus to balanced foreign policy

Balancing global partnerships is SA’s new foreign strategy

5 December 2025

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s firm handling of his US counterpart during a successful G20 process has modified popular views about his capabilities. He is still a lousy president on domestic matters, the conventional wisdom now goes, but he is rather good at foreign affairs.

However, the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs is far from clear-cut. Countries seek agreements with their peers, but any deal must be ratified at home by legislatures, interest groups, citizens and political parties. Negotiators respond to the preferences of their domestic constituents while using pressures at home as leverage in international forums. In practice, the two levels of negotiation are simultaneous and continuous.

South Africa’s foreign policy has long been criticised for insufficiently prioritising economic growth and development at home. Turf wars between trade and foreign affairs officials have made an integrated approach hard, while debates about race and transformation have undermined co-operation between big business and government.

The major international crises during Ramaphosa’s first term — the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Palestine war — created space for a reorientation of Pretoria’s goals and instruments. Behind the smokescreen of a theatrical confrontation with President Donald Trump, the final G20 summit revealed three related shifts in South Africa’s foreign policy.

After a decade of emphasis on a China-dominated Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) forum, a significant rebalancing has taken place. Former president Thabo Mbeki cautioned about the danger of falling into a new “colonial relationship” with China, noting that exporting raw materials while importing Chinese manufactured goods would leave Africa “condemned to underdevelopment” in a replication of European colonialism.

The new, more balanced, approach recognises that South Africa benefits from Chinese markets and financing but that we also need European investment and global standards access, and alternative vehicles for South-South co-operation.

In a second development, the G20 cycle underscored the maturing and pragmatic relationship between South Africa and Europe. European countries remain by far the biggest investors in this country, and the eurozone hugely surpasses China as South Africa’s biggest trading partner.

The G20 summit unveiled a sharper instrumental and pragmatic focus on critical minerals, sustainable energy transition and trade standards, in place of previous performative issues of political alignment and misalignment.

South Africa signalled deepening co-operation on energy transition supply chains, with the critical minerals needed for batteries, wind magnets and hydrogen infrastructure framed as a durable area of strategic alignment. South Africa wants investment in local beneficiation while Europe wants reliable supply.

In a third development on the margins of the G20 process, leaders of the three Ibsa countries — India, Brazil and South Africa — indicated their determination to revitalise the forum as a channel for South-South co-operation outside the broader Brics agenda.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has established a close working relationship with Ramaphosa, while India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was uncharacteristically effusive. Ibsa is the one major trilateral South-South forum that allows South Africa strategic autonomy, avoids being folded into Sino-centric diplomacy, and facilitates co-operation between large democracies (or just-about-democracies in India’s case) that share concerns about norms, institutions, trade and energy transition financing.

Positive signalling about Ibsa takes place while Europe and the US are seeking non-Chinese industrial partners, Brazil is concerned about mineral supply chains and energy transition, India is positioning itself as a hedge power, and South Africa wants South-South development co-operation and beneficiation without sacrificing Western investment. Ibsa provides a platform for these various goals to align without the geopolitical baggage that sometimes surrounds Brics.

The real test of these three shifts in South Africa’s international orientation lies not in their intrinsic elegance and rationality, but rather in their sustainability, and in whether they will deliver the fruits of stability, co-operation and economic development.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town. He recently published a book about the post-apartheid presidents, ‘Presidential Power’.

November 21, 2025

Ramaphosa is likely to see out his second full term as state president

ANTHONY BUTLER: Enemies dream, but Ramaphosa is enjoying his presidential role

Few believe his deputy, Paul Mashatile, would improve the ANC’s dire electoral prospects

First published in Business Day and BusinessLive

November 21, 2025

Cyril Ramaphosa is unlikely to be forced from office because neither the ANC nor parliament has the will or unity to remove him, and he has multiple avenues to stay in power even if party dynamics shift, says the writer. (Thapelo Morebudi)

Recent weeks have brought another outbreak of wishful thinking among President Cyril Ramaphosa’s enemies. Symptoms include a recurrent and feverish dream in which he is on the verge of resigning, perhaps to spend more time with his cattle. There is also a delirious fantasy that the ANC’s national executive committee will summon the collective will to oust him from office.

The president will survive until the December 2027 elective conference of the ANC, the dreamers usually concede. But they insist he will be ejected from office soon afterwards, perhaps as part of a millenarian frenzy that propels deputy president Paul Mashatile into the Union Buildings.

The sad end to the terms of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma is typically brought forward as evidence. Both were forced to resign under the threat of a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly.

Is Ramaphosa really destined for a similar exit? There is no indication that he is willing to step down and he seems to be rather enjoying himself. Mbeki and Zuma have taught us that politicians with the drive to reach the highest office will not easily relinquish power.

Few ANC leaders are convinced that Mashatile would be an effective state president. Fewer still believe he would improve the party’s dire electoral prospects. If he becomes ANC president it will be due to his mastery of internal ANC machinations alone.

The former liberation movement no longer has a majority in the National Assembly and this is the only body that can remove a president through a vote of no confidence. Such a vote would almost certainly be held by secret ballot.

In a landmark 2017 case the Constitutional Court held that the speaker has discretion. The present speaker — for a variety of reasons — will not concede to pressure for an open vote. Who can be confident that a majority of MPs would vote for Ramaphosa’s defenestration in a secret ballot, given that so few have undergone a genuine Pauline conversion?

The ANC would be threatened with a fresh and possibly existential crisis, and Ramaphosa could exercise other options. Mbeki and his cronies created the Congress of the People to pressure the faction that ousted him. Zuma formed the MK party in the same spirit.

While Ramaphosa is unlikely to create a new party, it is quite common for presidents to switch parties — or abandon party affiliation altogether — to protect the “broader national interest” (in other words, their own continuation in office).

Take Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president in 2019-22. He ditched the social democrats, with whom he was long associated, and was elected with the Social Liberal Party. After clashes with the party leadership he left while still president and governed without a party for more than two years, only later joining the Liberal Party.

Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, from whom Ramaphosa may have acquired his fondness for Ankole cattle and associated sofa beds, originally came to office through the National Resistance Movement, which was not a party at all until it suited Museveni for it to become one.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s leader, was part of the Islamist Welfare Party and then the Virtue Party, both later banned, before co-founding the Justice & Development Party in 2001, only to remain in power for two decades as prime minister and then president.

The fact that presidents can remain in office by switching parties, creating new parties to retain or consolidate power, or rising above all party affiliations does not mean they will do so. However, such a possibility introduces further uncertainty into the calculations of those who might want to oust them.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

November 7, 2025

Bifurcated political systems

ANTHONY BUTLER: Does Mamdani have what it takes to deliver change in New York?

First published in Business Day

November 07, 2025

New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the Unisphere in the Queens borough of New York City, US, in this November 5 2025 file photo. (Kylie Cooper)

Right-wing curmudgeons around the world are eagerly anticipating New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s forthcoming collision with reality. They are certain there is no way a 34-year-old political novice can transition from fronting a campaign to running a huge city such as New York. I’m not so sure.

Mamdani’s operation was close to flawless, propelling him from little-known state assembly member to Democratic Party nominee in months. He secured the right endorsements from prominent figures such as Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez. And he raised large sums from small donors ― the average donation was about $80 ― and so avoided indebtedness to powerful interests.

His campaign focused on the affordability crisis in the city, proposing rent freezes, free transit systems and higher taxes on the wealthy. Such complex issues will not allow for simple solutions. As equally great cities like Paris and London have shown, however, there are plenty of interventions that are both pro-poor and pro-economy.

Mamdani has credited his parents for stimulating his interest in politics, and he may have imbued from his mother, the brilliant filmmaker Mira Nair, an intense sense of appearance. Like the most natural politicians, Mamdani has crafted a persona that appeals to a wide constituency. He engages seemingly effortlessly in a continuous self-narration, an autobiographical performance of that persona embedded in his daily conduct.

He has campaigned on complex and sensitive issues, including the conflict in Gaza, without making mistakes and without simply rehearsing talking notes prepared for him by others. This suggests ― to a degree more and more unusual among professional politicians ― that he understands what he is saying, even when he is traversing a political minefield.

His father, the Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani, once wrote a critique of Americans’ framing of Islam and Muslims, pointing out that it was US support for anti-Soviet campaigns in Afghanistan during the 1980s that gave birth to modern militant jihad. This had the merit of being true.

Mahmood senior’s most influential book, however, was Citizen and Subject,published in 1996. Drawing on his research in SA and Uganda, he argued that the legacy of colonialism lived on in a distinct form of state power. Colonial rule in Africa created a dual or “bifurcated” political system that separated people into urban citizens and rural subjects. In cities, colonial governments established a civil legal order resembling European political rights, accessible only to settlers and a narrow African elite. In rural areas, colonisers ruled indirectly through customary authorities — mostly chiefs who were appointed and empowered to enforce “tradition” and control local populations.

Mamdani’s conception of the bifurcated state has travelled beyond African studies, not because of its nuance and accuracy, each of which is questionable, but because of its intrinsic political appeal. Researchers and activists have found parallels in India, where colonial indirect rule through princely states and tribal areas produced enduring differentiated citizenship, for example, through scheduled tribes.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, customary law and “native” political authority ostensibly continue to shape local governance and group rights. In Latin America, colonial authorities have arguably maintained communal land systems and traditional leaders as instruments of rural control.

Bold scholars have even applied the concept to Israel and Palestine, suggesting that the legal differences between citizens and people under military occupation echo the divide between citizen and subject. And in the US, indigenous nations and racially segregated governance carry echoes of a similar bifurcation.

This is a powerful sentiment that the mayor-elect has tapped into. Many people intuitively understand the idea of a contemporary subjecthood, a bifurcated reality in which it is we who are the subordinate population lacking substantive citizenship. The young Mamdani may have inherited a formula for fighting back against right-wing populism.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

October 24, 2025

Elections no longer secure democracy

ANTHONY BUTLER: Trivial elections and decline of electoral democracy

First published in Business Day

October 24, 2025

A voter holds a ballot paper during the country's general election at Thyolo District, south of Blantyre, Malawi, September 16, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer — A voter holds a ballot paper during the country’s general election at Thyolo District, south of Blantyre, Malawi, September 16, 2025. REUTERS/Stringer

The daily news from Donald Trump’s America has alerted people worldwide to the fragility of democratic regimes. The truth is that global democracy was already in sharp retreat.

The democratic ideal, celebrated in 1994 as SA transitioned to freedom, assumed a simple equation: prosperity begets democracy, and elections define democracy.

Yet as we survey the political landscape of 2025 the pillars that supported such optimism are crumbling. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project reveals a dire trend: 72% of the world’s population now live in autocracies, the highest number since 1978.

Countries such as China have become prosperous while remaining steadfastly autocratic, destroying the old confidence that development causes democratisation.

Elections occur more than before, but fewer of them are meaningful. Countries with huge populations such Indonesia and India have slipped into “electoral authoritarianism”: they hold elections, but incumbents rig the outcomes not by simple ballot box stuffing but rather by media capture and censorship, undermining election management bodies, weaponising tax and prosecuting authorities, repressing or banning civil society organisations and using social media to amplify manufactured polarisation.

Elections are historically recent devices that are increasingly unable to deliver government in the interests of the governed.

Ancient Athens, credited in the West as the birthplace of “rule by the people”, deliberately avoided elections for almost all roles, relying instead on random selection, which embodied equality and averted domination by entrenched elites.

Similarly, former president Nelson Mandela described the Thembu tribal meetings of his youth as “democracy in its purest form”, characterised by deliberation and consensus, where “majority rule was a foreign notion” and all men (if not women) were heard. These earlier systems focused on direct participation in the interest of the governed, not the selection of rulers through the ballot box.

When modern electoral systems did emerge they were driven by the impossibility of direct democracy in large societies. As the franchise expanded from wealthy males to the poor, political elites created safeguards to protect their property from redistribution: indirect elections, judicial review by conservative constitutional courts, independent central banks, and other instruments to frustrate popular agency.

We are seeing the rise of “democracy with Chinese characteristics” as a substitute for today’s shambolic but autonomous collective action. Under this model the state uses pervasive surveillance and data analytics to identify social grievances in real time, responding to them to maintain legitimacy without the cost and noise of democratic protest and campaigning.

While emerging AI technologies initially promised better governance, they are better still at spreading disinformation, manufacturing deepfakes and undermining trust in institutions. These technologies move faster than our capacity to regulate them. AI-powered anticipatory governance could soon harness big data and predictive analytics to prevent crises before they emerge, which risks bypassing public debate entirely.

A fightback for electoral democracy may be a long shot, but it is conceivable. Recent U-turns in countries such as Brazil and Poland demonstrate that autocratisation can be reversed. Key to these successes has been countering orchestrated disinformation, exposing corruption linked to strongman leaders and restoring the institutional infrastructure for meaningful elections.

The African continent faces unprecedented demographic growth alongside an unfolding climate change-induced collapse of livelihoods, which together will bring widespread, poorly planned urbanisation and politically destabilising population movements across borders.

SA is meanwhile seeing a sharp drop in electoral participation, with just four out of every 10 of the eligible voting age population participating in last year’s national elections.

It is a cruel fact that democracy is not an institution granted, but rather requires a constant state of defence and active participation if it is not to be lost just a few decades after it has been found.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.

October 10, 2025

Sarupen likely to take Zille’s position

ANTHONY BUTLER: Ashor Sarupen a likely, and good, successor to Zille in DA council

Although strongly associated with Helen Zille, Sarupen cannot easily be painted as her puppet or proxy

First published in Business Day

10 October 2025

Helen Zille’s adoption as the DA’s candidate for the mayorship of Johannesburg has generated a good deal of excitement, but the vacancy she will leave behind in her current position as the party’s federal council chair may be even more consequential.

In a party constitution apparently designed to generate confusion, the DA federal council is the governing body between meetings of the federal congress — the party’s supreme elective gathering, which is convened every two or three years.

The federal council is a hodgepodge that contains members of the federal executive — the top leadership of the party — provincial chairs, some regional chairs, public representatives from the national, provincial and municipal legislatures, and various other panjandrums.

It takes key decisions between congresses, approves candidate selection regulations and holds the party’s public representatives to account. It is required to meet at least three times a year, but typically does so far more often.

The chair of the federal council is responsible for the administration of the party, running its internal machinery, pushing through implementation and managing co-ordinating structures. Any chair must work closely with the federal leader — for example Mmusi Maimane or John Steenhuisen — who is the public face of the party but may not always seem to be in charge.

James Selfe, who served as federal council chair for two decades under the federal leaderships of Tony Leon, Zille and Maimane, kept a low public profile. In contrast, while Zille has been praised for her organisational skills, she has loudly voiced controversial and sometimes polarising views that have weighed on her party’s efforts to broaden its electoral appeal.

Her successor, who will be elected at the next federal congress in April next year, is likely to be the 37-year-old Ashor Sarupen, who has been an MP only since 2019. Although strongly associated with Zille — her former chief of staff and leadership campaign manager — he cannot easily be painted as her puppet or proxy.

A rational and classical liberal, like Selfe, he eschews Zille’s eccentric anti-wokeism and her flirtations with neocolonialism. He worked his way steadily up the party ranks as a city councillor in Ekurhuleni, a member of the Gauteng provincial legislature and, since 2020, as a deputy federal council chair.

Beyond knowing how to keep a low profile, he has two strengths that may recommend him to the party congress. First, he has expertise in economics and corporate strategy, served as DA spokesperson on the finance and appropriations committees, and has by all accounts been a successful deputy finance minister in the government of national unity (GNU). These are crucial skills in a politics dominated by fiscal fantasy.

Second, he is a professional campaigner. A decade ago he played strategic roles in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng and then national election campaigns. Speaking at the Cape Town Press Club on Wednesday, he emphasised the need for modernisation and an increased digital marketing spend relative to still-essential ground campaigning. Such a mindset is essential if the DA is to have any chance of significantly increasing its vote share given the absence of a national branch footprint.

In 2022, the ANC elected a professional campaigner, Fikile Mbalula, as its secretary-general, in a position similar to that of DA federal council chair. It seems likely that the DA will follow suit and choose an analytically minded campaign manager who has demonstrated strong tactical successes and understands both traditional and digital campaign tools, to the position of federal council chair.

Many DA activists feel the party has underperformed under the leadership of Zille and Steenhuisen. There is every chance they will happily dispatch Zille to the battle front in Johannesburg and then choose Sarupen to rebuild party consensus around a less contentious variant of liberalism and recalibrate and modernise campaign strategy.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.