Newspaper columns, arguments and ideas
Published in Business Day on 19 May 2008 under the title, 'Lovable Zuma may be harder to keep from perpetual power'. Anthony Butler When former President Nelson Mandela last week praised the new African National Congress (ANC) leadership at a ceremonial to mark his acceptance of the Freedom of the City of Tshwane, he may …
Continue reading "Missing Mbeki; fearing Zuma. A prediction from 2008"
Published in Business Day on 17 September, 2007, under the title, 'SA politicians show their spirit' Should South Africans celebrate the recent discovery of an unexpected spiritual dimension in some of the country’s political leaders? Earlier this year, churchmen from the Full Gospel Church, the eThekwini Community Church, and the Miracles Gospel Church conferred the …
Published in Business Day on 8 August 2007, under the title, 'When mineworkers changed the course of SA history'. Anthony Butler Exactly twenty years ago [now a little over thirty], the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) launched the most staggering industrial action of the apartheid era. On the evening of 9 August 1987, the night …
Continue reading "The great mineworkers’ strike: 30 years on"
ANTHONY BUTLER: Pensions for patronage close to policy "Throwing pensioners’ money at unreformed parastatals might buy crooked politicians some time, but it is an appalling ethical breach." BL PREMIUM 22 SEPTEMBER 2017 - 04:44 ANTHONY BUTLER There has been widespread condemnation of a reported plot to hijack the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), with the apparent aim …
Seniority in the ANC will only get you so far Business Day, 1 March 2013 The idea of “seniority” plays an elusive but important role in the internal politics of the African National Congress (ANC). Its meaning is neither defined in the ANC’s constitution nor debated at the movement’s elective conferences. But it shapes decisions …
Thabo Mbeki 1978 The Historical Injustice Transcribed: for marxists.org by Pallo Jordan; This speech was delivered by Thabo Mbeki, member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, at a seminar held in Ottawa, Canada, from February 19 to 22, 1978. It was published in Sechaba, March 1979 issue, with a view to generating a discussion …
Continue reading "A quasi-Marxist survey of SA history from Thabo Mbeki (1978)"
As I noted more than two years ago, the tapping of public sector pensions to "recapitalise" parastatals -- notably Eskom -- was debated and apparently approved in principle by the ANC's economic transformation committee (ETC) in May 2015. Since the Mbeki era, proponents of competition in a regulated wholesale electricity market have proposed a clear separation …
Continue reading "PIC capture is not about the Guptas alone"
This is an excerpt from a Huffington Post piece on CR, written by Liesl Pretorius on 17 August 2017. Who is Cyril Ramaphosa? Professor Anthony Butler of the University of Cape Town, who wrote a biography of Cyril Ramaphosa, says he's not sure if he "ever really got to the bottom of" who Ramaphosa is. …
Continue reading "What kind of president would Ramaphosa be?"
When WMC actually existed, Mandela saw through it and condemned it. Nelson Mandela on Anglo American Corporation in 1953: “The Oppenheimers sometimes presented their companies as enemies of apartheid. Ernest and Harry each served as opposition members of parliament protesting against the evils of segregation. At the same time, Anglo was at heart a mining …
Continue reading "The personality of Nelson Mandela, Part 2"
There is an interesting tale that illuminates something of the character of Nelson Mandela and his close friend Mac Maharaj. Together with Cyril Ramaphosa, they were the key ANC figures in the negotiation of SA's new constitutional settlement. When Mac was a prisoner on Robben Island, Mandela took him under his wing and determined, in …
Continue reading "The personality of Nelson Mandela, Part 1"
