Newspaper columns, arguments and ideas
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"
ACT To prohibit marriages between Europeans and non-Europeans, and to provide for matters incidental thereto. ________________________________________ (English text signed by the Governor-General.) (Assented to 1st July, 1949.) ________________________________________ BE IT ENACTED by the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, the Senate and the House of Assembly of the Union of South Africa, as follows:― 1. (1) As …
ANTHONY BUTLER: Half a dozen eggs to dance on in ANC 'What is this strange thing called the 'top six' of the ANC?' BL PREMIUM 08 SEPTEMBER 2017 - 06:04 ANTHONY BUTLER What is this strange thing called the "top six" of the ANC? An historical accident of relatively recent creation, it is not mentioned at …
I responded to Dr Lushaba's letter on 10 September 2016. Dr Lushaba's letter has since been posted on the Internet but my reply has not. I am therefore posting it here for reference purposes. It addresses some of the inaccurate claims made by Dr Lushaba in his open letter about the composition of the student …
Continue reading "A year later, part 2: My response to Dr Lushaba’s “open letter”"
This is the content of an "open letter" to me from Dr Lwazi Lushaba on 30 August 2016. Update (31 August 2020): Kindly also read my response, which included data disproving many of Dr Lushaba's claims. The reply post includes my original email, which Dr Lushaba misrepresented with a fabricated "quotation". Anthony Butler Who am …
Continue reading "A year later: an open letter from Dr Lwazi Lushaba to Anthony Butler"
ANTHONY BUTLER: Radical economic transformation is inevitable If, or more likely, when Zuma’s faction wins at the ANC’s December conference, money will flow from working people to the elite BL PREMIUM 01 SEPTEMBER 2017 - 06:01 ANTHONY BUTLER It looks increasingly likely that a win by President Jacob Zuma’s incumbent faction at the ANC’s conference in …
Parastatals’ ‘budgets for dummies’ the way to go Business Day 18 Mar 2011 Anthony Butler SA HAS become the site of two fascinating experiments in the methodology of budgetary accountability. Contrasting approaches to the transparency of government budgets — the Treasury model and the parastatal model — can now be compared for the first time. …
Continue reading "Parastatal budgeting (a vaguely prescient column from 2011)"
Is democracy good? Wednesday 30 August 2017 The global political context has radically changed since the mid-1990s when I wrote Democracy and Apartheid. We no longer live in an age of liberal triumphalism. Political analysts do not expect “democracy” to solve all our problems. And we only have to look at the president of the …
