Tag: politics

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The return of mercantilism

ANTHONY BUTLER | SA mitigates US diplomatic tensions with new global trade ties

Ramaphosa signs EU mineral pact, eyes deeper trade with China and India

First published in Business Day

October 22

Late last year President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a significant agreement with EU leaders to develop sustainable minerals and metals value chains. Picture: Yves Herman

Relations between Pretoria and Washington have deteriorated sharply during President Donald Trump’s second term, with the US administration bemoaning black economic empowerment policy, the International Court of Justice case against Israel, and an ostensible “genocide” of white Afrikaners. The SA government, however, seems to be moving reasonably adroitly to mitigate the risks posed by diplomatic tensions with the US.

Late last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a significant agreement with European Union leaders to develop sustainable minerals and metals value chains. This week Ramaphosa confirmed SA’s plans to deepen trade relationships with China, building on Beijing’s recent extension of zero-tariff treatment to qualifying imports from African countries. The president also has stated ambitions in India where talks over a preferential trade agreement have restarted.

SA arguably has certain advantages over wealthier peers in adapting to the challenges of the current era. For decades, global economic policymakers in the north could rest on the comforting premise that open markets and international trade operate independently of power politics. Today, of course, that illusion is no longer tenable, as large powers have begun to deploy sanctions, export controls, and supply chain embargoes, and national security is displacing economic efficiency as the driving force of economic policy.

This incipient wave of trade wars, sanctions, and strategic decoupling is far from unprecedented, of course, and legendary mid-century thinkers like Albert Hirschman, John Maynard Keynes, and Thomas Schelling recognized that international economic integration is never politically neutral. Hirschman’s 1945 book National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade traced how 17th-century mercantilist thinkers like Jean-Baptiste Colbert viewed international trade as a zero-sum game in which national wealth directly translated into state power.

While 18th-century liberal economists like Adam Smith and David Hume believed that free trade can promote mutual prosperity and peace, Hirschman observed that mercantilist logic inexorably resurfaces during periods of geopolitical tension. When international order fractures, trade policy quickly reverts from a vehicle for mutual gain into an instrument of statecraft and strategic coercion.

The core of Hirschman’s 1945 work is its analysis of asymmetric trade dependency. Hirschman demonstrated that when a powerful state becomes the dominant buyer or supplier for a smaller neighbour, it creates a structural vulnerability. By intentionally cultivating these asymmetric ties, the dominant power can threaten to disrupt trade, using economic leverage to extract political concessions or economic rents without firing a shot.

During the globalization of the late 20th century, policy makers in the north largely set aside Hirschman’s warnings, assuming market competition would deter large nations from weaponizing trade. Today, however, they are having to revisit classical mercantilist or “geoeconomic” frameworks to understand how hegemony, export controls, and supply chain choke points can be used to force political alignment.

As major powers construct defensive economic shields, “friendshoring” networks, and technological export restrictions, middle powers like SA face intensifying pressure to take sides. A smaller nation heavily reliant on a single power for critical technology, debt financing, or export markets risks being coerced into geopolitical alignment, or suffering severe collateral damage if those trade ties are suddenly severed.

While this situation poses many challenges, SA policy makers have never viewed international trade through a naive, peacetime lens. During the 1970s and 1980s, the apartheid state routinely weaponized transport monopolies, rail corridors, and energy grids against neighbouring Frontline States in a textbook demonstration of Hirschman’s asymmetric dependency model.

Simultaneously, liberation movement leaders were proponents of comprehensive international sanctions, oil embargoes, and financial credit freezes, while apartheid governments were forced to build sophisticated defensive economic shields, import-substitution industries, and clandestine trade networks to survive.

This shared history as proponents, practitioners, and targets of geoeconomics perhaps leaves our policymakers and business leaders more comfortable than their northern peers with supply chain adaptation, sanction evasion, and the amelioration of economic dependencies in a fracturing world.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town

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Coalition outcomes

ANTHONY BUTLER | DA’s coalition approach falters as ANC adapts

ANC’s pragmatic strategy outlasts rivals in shifting political landscape

First published in Business Day

October 08, 2026

The Coalitions Barometer 2026, launched yesterday by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), offers a wonderful new resource for understanding the development of coalition politics in SA.

The Barometer shows how extensive coalitions have become. Beyond the grand coalition at national level, three provincial legislatures – Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), and the Northern Cape – have coalitions in their legislatures. Since the 2021 local government elections, more than a third of municipal councils have had no majority party at some point, many of those ‘hung’ councils have been through a series of different coalition governments, each with its own configuration of parties.

The big parties have responded to the challenges of coalition politics in distinct ways. The African National Congress (ANC) has adopted what MISTRA calls a “pragmatic inclusion” approach, frequently ceding the mayoralty to small coalition partners to secure power. It extended its “governing footprint” from just 45% of hung councils in 2021 to 68% by 2025 and managed to build relatively durable partnerships.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), in contrast, has mostly insisted on leading any coalition it has joined, holding the mayoralty in 43 of the 52 administrations it belonged to. When it was unable to lead a coalition, it typically moved into opposition, and its coalitions were less enduring. The DA favoured ideologically aligned partners and so governed frequently with the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) provide another contrast, entering government 37 times, but holding the mayoralty only twice, largely because its dispersed electorate left it relatively weak everywhere. The party also made a major strategic shift in late 2022, dissolving partnerships with the DA and the IFP and turning to the ANC as its key partner.

Strikingly, the ANC and the DA did not govern together at municipal level and repeatedly tried to destabilise one another’s administrations.

The barometer’s findings suggest that the DA came out worse because of the ANC’s size, its placement as a centre party, and its strategy. Trying to government without the council’s largest party – which is most often the ANC — is the biggest predictor of coalition collapse. The DA strategy of assembling anti-ANC coalitions where the ANC was the biggest party therefore failed comprehensively.

Coalitions between parties on the ideological left and right which exclude the centre – what are known as donut coalitions — are also vulnerable to collapse because conflicting policy preferences eventually create divisions.

In terms of strategy, as we have seen, the ANC has handed the position of mayor to smaller parties to build and maintain minimum-winning coalitions. The DA’s pursuit of the mayoralty has instead pushed it into fragile coalitions that faced persistent no-confidence hazards.

Taken together, these factors have meant ANC-led coalitions lasting almost twice as long as DA-led coalitions. Despite no longer being a majority party, the ANC may well be able to draw on similar residual advantages after the 2029 national and provincial elections.

Coalitions in Metropolitan authorities have been especially unstable, and the report identifies several factors behind this instability. Metro voters divide across numerous parties, forcing aspirant governments to assemble broad and complex coalitions. In most large cities, coalitions have had little room for manoeuvre and virtually every partner, no matter how small, has held leverage. All the DA-led city coalitions that tried to govern where the ANC was the biggest party rapidly collapsed.

The report notes that Metros have multi-billion-rand budgets that raise the political stakes, and they have high levels of media exposure that make negotiation difficult. They are also plagued by posturing political leaders who engage in blackmail and tactical defection.

All this suggests that the politics of the municipalities crucial for economic growth and social development will continue to be fraught after the 4 November elections.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town

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Impacts of fertilizer price rises

ANTHONY BUTLER | Rising food prices threaten South Africa’s stability

Supply chain shocks in the Middle East drive up grain and vegetable prices

First published in Business Day

September 17, 2026

Historians and political scientists like to remind us that 18th century bread riots presaged the French Revolution, rising food costs contributed to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and increases in bread prices helped spark the 2011 Arab Spring. While warnings about oil supply risks and price rises have captured the attention of political leaders, the Middle East war also matters because the region is an important producers of urea, ammonia and sulphur, which are essential inputs for commercial agriculture.

After the initial disruption of the Gulf of Hormuz, it was anticipated that fertilizer production costs would rise and exports from Gulf producers would be delayed or diverted. This led to fears of a global food crisis. While gulf exports have indeed fallen dramatically, however, alternative suppliers such as Egypt, Nigeria, Russia, China and the United States have filled the gap so that warehouses have not run empty. But fertiliser prices have been rising to unsustainable levels for many poorer countries.

Governments maintain strategic petroleum reserves that act as a buffer against immediate oil price impacts, although of course these are now running low across the globe. There is no comparable international reserve system for fertiliser. That means fertiliser markets adjust pretty directly, mostly through price, and the burden falls disproportionately on poorer importing countries.

In the short term, some farmers reduce fertilizer application, affecting future crop yields. While not immediately visible, lower yields and higher costs from the last planting season eventually start to reduce food supply. Over longer periods, nutrient deficient soil becomes permanently less productive. As prices for staple grains and vegetables begin to rise for consumers, they act as a regressive tax, hitting poorer households especially hard.

While rising food prices do not have political effects on their own, they can be the spark that ignites broader pre-existing grievances around inequality, corruption, and political repression, and the focal point for wider anger at governments.

South Africa’s exposure is not only direct (through fertiliser and fuel imports), but indirect through the fragility of neighbouring states. As a region, southern Africa is a net importer of both food and fertilizer.

Countries such as Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia were especially dependent on Gulf suppliers before the Hormuz disruption and they have significant smallholder farming. When fertiliser prices rise sharply, many farmers simply reduce application rates rather than paying the higher price. The result is lower maize yields the following season. That matters because South Africa is the region’s principal surplus maize producer. Poor harvests elsewhere increase demand for SA grain, raising domestic food prices and putting pressure on export logistics.

Higher prices will hurt consumers and strain foreign exchange reserves across the region. The urban poor will be especially hard hit by rising food costs, increasing the risks of social unrest in big cities. Opposition movements are likely to place blame on incumbents and tap into discontent.

While it would be an overstatement to say that higher fertiliser prices directly cause migration, moreover, but they can contribute to it. Where livelihoods depend heavily on agriculture, prolonged economic distress can encourage movement towards cities and sometimes across borders. South Africa has historically been the main destination for regional labour migration, so economic shocks elsewhere often have domestic political consequences here.

This provides a useful reminder that SA’s security is increasingly tied to the institutional resilience of southern Africa. Investments in logistics, agricultural trade corridors and regional food security may yield larger political dividends than they first appear, because they reduce the likelihood that external geopolitical shocks become domestic governance crises. The maintenance of strong political relationships with regional partners, moreover, has become more important than ever.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town

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Waterfront Watershed?

ANTHONY BUTLER | Cape Town faces tough questions about inclusive urban development

Healthy debate around the V&A Waterfront’s role in reinforcing or bridging Cape Town’s divide

First published in Business Day

September 10, 2026

The Victoria & Alfred (V&A) Waterfront is often presented as one of the world’s most successful urban regeneration projects. Jointly owned since 2011 by Growthpoint Properties and the Public Investment Corporation, the Waterfront this year boasts 13 hotels, 15 conference venues, 400 small and medium sized businesses, 170,000 cruise passengers from 63 ships, and 25 million visits from locals and tourists.

The V&A has also attracted sustained criticism over the years. It has been described by its critics as an exclusive enclave in an unequal city. Despite public accessibility, the precinct is managed by a private company, with its own security, rules, and commercial priorities. It offers a polished, safe version of Cape Town that is largely disconnected from the poverty visible only a few kilometres away.

While the Waterfront has been successful economically, moreover, that success has pushed up surrounding property values in Green Point, De Waterkant and the Foreshore. Disagreement has simmered about whether this represents healthy urban regeneration or displacement of lower-income residents and businesses – a reason new luxury residential developments provoke strong reactions.

The V&A therefore embodies a fascinating tension, serving as a great post-apartheid urban success story and a major engine of employment and tourism, but also as a symbol of the city’s – and the country’s — enduring spatial inequality.

A new phase of V&A development promises further controversy. New residential blocks and hotels (one rather spectacular) are under construction, and both retail and entertainment spaces are expanding. A “superyacht arena” will shortly open to host the mega-ships of the world’s typically rather odious but high-spending billionaires.

Now a planned R24bn Granger Bay expansion project proposes to reclaim about 3.8 hectares from the sea and create a new protected bay, tidal pools, beaches, hotels, apartments, offices and public promenades.

Speaking at the Cape Town Press Club earlier this week, Waterfront CEO Graham Wood claimed the project will create thousands of construction and permanent jobs, improve coastal protection against storm surges, and provide new public access to the shoreline. Opponents continue to raise concerns about building heights, years of heavy construction traffic as breakwaters are built, and impacts on marine ecosystems and archaeological remains.

Litigation-happy local residents can be bought off, and city mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and national environment minister David Maynier — both of whom belong to the more reputable wing of the Democratic Alliance (DA) — are likely to give the reclamation application a sympathetic hearing. Necessary parliamentary ratification, however, is likely to prove challenging.

In key respects, the Waterfront exemplifies a controversial model of urban development and city growth championed by the DA. Perhaps best conceptualised by influential urban economist Ted Graeber, this approach suggests that city governments should conceptually separate two fundamentally different roles: a “for-profit” function, in which the city acts like a real estate developer, assembling land, investing in infrastructure, enabling density, and capturing increases in land value to generate revenue; and a “social” function, through which revenue generated from land and property development is used to pay for the city’s central public mission of reducing poverty through housing, services, transport, and other social investments.

Graeber’s memorable formulation is that a city should think of itself as owning a profitable real estate company whose purpose is to fund a non-profit poverty reduction organisation.

If this is indeed the DA’s position, the pre-election period would be an appropriate time for DA leaders to set it out. The interesting debate is not whether the Waterfront can succeed economically, but whether the City is appropriately separating its revenue-generating property business from its redistributive activities, whether valuable public land is being managed with a coherent value-capture model, and how the overall strategy will ultimately produce a more inclusive and prosperous city.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town

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Fruits of GNU

ANTHONY BUTLER | Coalition government reshapes ANC’s constitutional stance

GNU reasserts communitarian values that are threatened in these polarising and populist times

First published in Business Day

September 03, 2026

The end of the year will be marked not just by local government elections but also by the mid-point of the government of national unity. GNU is approaching an accountability phase, because enough time will soon have passed for voters to make considered judgements about its performance. That makes late 2026 and 2027 a particularly revealing period for coalition stability and positioning ahead of 2029.

So far, citizens seem to have embraced the idea of coalition government quite readily while at the same time expressing growing unhappiness with the GNU’s execution of policy.

Many political observers have meanwhile adopted a cynical interpretation of GNU, viewing it as essentially a coalition between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA), which between them hold more than enough seats to form a government. The function of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), on this account, is primarily to obscure the true nature of the coalition. The other seven parties are there mostly to dilute the influence of the DA.

There are, however, also positive interpretations of the role that the GNU is performing in the political system. First, it tentatively reaffirms an ideal of societal unity that has been in danger of dissipating under the pressures of economic stagnation, government dysfunction, and enduring inequality. A unity once embodied in SA churches and in the ANC itself has dissolved, whereas GNU reasserts communitarian values that are threatened in today’s polarising and populist times.

Second, the GNU holds out the possibility not just of respecting but also of changing the constitution. The ANC, DA and IFP together fall just short of the two-thirds majority needed for constitutional change; the GNU parties together, in contrast, command more than 70% of national assembly seats.

A range of intractable problems have been posed by the growing dysfunction of the local government sphere, not least in the distribution of electricity and water services and the collection of user charges and property taxes. A successor GNU may well be a necessary precondition for constitutional changes that will be needed to resolve these key challenges.

Third, GNU has established a degree of rational economic policy consensus, in large measure through the self-exclusion of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the MK Party from participation. The EFF argued that it could not enter government with parties that opposed large scale land expropriation without compensation, and the nationalisation of mines and large businesses. The MK also portrayed GNU as a grand coalition designed to preserve existing economic power rather than transform it.

Fourth, the GNU has brought together the major parties that remain broadly committed to the post-1994 constitutional settlement, while leaving outside government the two parties — MK and the EFF — that have mounted the most sustained challenges to constitutional supremacy.

MK’s 2024 manifesto proposed a referendum to scrap the 1996 Constitution which it views as a colonial settlement that gives excessive power to unelected institutions. The EFF’s manifesto, for its part, proposed substantial constitutional restructuring, including abolishing the provincial sphere and moving towards a unitary state. More recent discussion documents question constitutional supremacy itself.

In all these ways the GNU may have permanently changed the ANC itself. The liberation movement has always enjoyed a decidedly ambivalent relationship with both economic orthodoxy and constitutionalism. Prominent ANC figures have often criticised “neo-liberal economics”, constitutional supremacy, and judicial power, particularly when financial markets and courts have constrained governments. GNU is significant because it has pulled the ANC towards a more explicitly constitutionalist and economically orthodox position, even though the parties in the GNU continue to disagree profoundly on specific policy choices.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town

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Donors and party democracy

ANTHONY BUTLER

First published in Business Day


July 24, 2026

If the anchor tenants of the government of national unity (GNU) are looking for shared policy proposals to take their coalition into the future, they could do worse than revisit the challenge of money and politics. Five years after the Political Party Funding Act (PPFA) came into force, it has brought transparency for those transactions parties were always happy to disclose, and silence on many of those that actually shape how the country is governed.

The Act’s architecture seemed sensible enough in 2018. Donations above a R100,000 threshold were to be disclosed, a R15 million cap was placed on what any single donor could give in a year, and donations from foreign governments and state-owned entities were banned outright.

But then the Electoral Commission, tasked with policing all this, had its budget cut by roughly R800 million over three years to 2025, at precisely the point it needed more capacity to chase disclosures. Splitting donations below the threshold, routing money through trusts and business associates, and receiving it in kind rather than by transfer, were all routinely adopted by the parties.

The numbers behind the PPFA architecture were then rewritten in depressing but predictable circumstances. In May 2024, days before the national and provincial elections, parliament passed the Electoral Matters Amendment Act (EMAA), one of whose effects was to strip the disclosure threshold and donation cap out of the regulations entirely, leaving the President to determine new figures at his leisure.

This created an open invitation, as My Vote Counts put it in a court application, for donors to give as much as they liked, behind a veil of secrecy, while the election campaign was underway. The Western Cape High Court wisely reinstated the old figures on an interim basis to give Parliament time to do its job properly.

Parliament’s idea of doing its job properly was to double both numbers. In August 2025, President Ramaphosa signed off on a disclosure threshold of R200,000 and an annual cap of R30 million. So the trajectory here was to gut the numbers before an election, get caught, restore them under court order, then legislate them upwards anyway. Each step made it easier for large donors to give more money, more privately, to the parties best placed to reward them – the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA), but also small mega-rich parties such as Rise Mzansi.

Sceptics believe reform is unlikely because the weaknesses in this law are not merely administrative oversights waiting to be fixed. Thresholds, they believe, will surely just be periodically renegotiated by the very Parliament that wrote the ineffectual law, in whatever direction currently suits the biggest parties.

There are two reasons, however, why the interests of GNU parties may be shifting. The first is that the role of money in internal party elections – something the PPFA does not regulate at all — has become increasingly destabilising. Up to half a billion Rand was spent by the CR17 campaign in 2017. The fact that big donors and lobbyists also seem to play a key role in determining who leads the DA points to the ubiquity of the challenge. It also suggests that donors may already exercise unregulated and untransparent influence over the formation of coalitions and the policy compromises they strike.

The second and more important change is the rapid growth of the illicit economy in SA, with the consequence that assorted criminal enterprises and mafias, most prominent among them the R27 billion illicit tobacco industry, have moved from funding internal ANC factions to sustaining major political parties outside the GNU, such as the Economic Freedom Fighters and the MK Party. This suggests the ANC and DA could now benefit together from better designed funding regulations and stronger enforcement.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town

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Hiding behind sporting triumphs

Why government should not rely on Bafana Bafana’s success

Hiding behind football should be avoided ahead of March and March’s June 30 deadline

Anthony Butler

First published in Business Day

26 June 2026

March and March’s 30 June “deadline” for undocumented foreign nationals to leave SA comes just a few days after Bafana Bafana’s 25 June victory over South Korea in the Fifa World Cup.

Politicians are often tempted to exploit national sporting successes for partisan gain. They align themselves with winning teams, attend victory parades, and invite champions to their official residences, in the hope that they will be engulfed in a positive emotional halo. At the least, they hope a sporting event will disrupt a negative news cycle and offer breathing space at a time of crisis.

There are three reasons why President Cyril Ramaphosa and other leaders of the Government of National Unity (GNU) would be unwise to lean too heavily on this crutch. The first is that the knock-out stage starts for SA as soon as Sunday 28 June. Their opponents, Canada, somewhat surprisingly sit far above them in the FIFA World Rankings. When leaders over-invest in national success, draping themselves in the team’s colours, a defeat reflects directly back on them. The political gains from victory tend to be modest and short-lived, while the reputational damage from defeat lingers far longer.

A second caution is that national unity is a part of the problem when it comes to anti-foreigner sentiment. Sport can temporarily transcend ethnic or class divides, but strident signals of national oneness may further undercut sympathy for outsiders.

The third reason for moving carefully is that 30 June is just a single day. Deadline-setting is a well-understood move for protest movements like March and March because it compels government to either act or be seen to do nothing. The countdown itself generates coverage, and the date becomes a focal point for both supporters and opponents. If demands are partially met, the movement can claim victory; if they are not, it can try to escalate matters further.

A deadline also facilitates coordination between groups that share messaging, synchronize tactics, and proclaim common goals — but without the need for a central command structure. When there is no formal central authority, there is no one to hold accountable for the violent actions of participants – some of who will be opportunistic actors linked to criminal mafias, extortion rackets that prey on foreign-owned businesses, or political parties eying the upcoming local government elections.

Parties of government would do better to focus on more tractable political issues. Food and fuel price spikes are key triggers for unrest everywhere because price shocks hit almost everyone at once, and this makes it easier to organise around collective grievances. Governments can do little to ameliorate inflation caused by international crises, but they can work much harder to explain its real origins to citizens.

They also need to counter claims that March and March and related formations are just organic “grassroots” protest movements or legitimate civil society organisations. These groups have rapidly incorporated emotionally charged incidents into anti-foreigner mobilisation campaigns. They exhibit consistent branding and message discipline, and have shown an ability to coordinate and amplify social media activity, all indications that professional “campaign managers” of the Bell Pottinger variety have been deployed. Such professionals and their funders surely can and should be exposed.

Beyond such efforts, government has little choice but to soldier on. March and March’s organisational capacity for a sustained or repeated national shutdown remains unknown. If 30 June passes off without major and uncontained unrest, the movement will lose much of its credibility, and its capacity to mobilise in future will be eroded. The political situation that has allowed anti-foreigner sentiment to flourish and be manipulated is not going away for the foreseeable future. As for the football, we should all simply enjoy the national team’s run of success for as long as it lasts.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town

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Grumpy old presidents and their legacies

 ANTHONY BUTLER | Antagonists Mbeki and Zuma spar over anti-migrant politics

Former presidents’ rivalry shapes debate on xenophobia and national identity

First published in Business Day

12 June 2026

Former president Thabo Mbeki was born on June 18 1942. That makes him
83 years old. His successor and current MK party leader, Jacob Zuma, was
born on April 12 1942, making him 84. Next week Mbeki will catch up with
Zuma, as he has done every June 18 since the nation was blessed by his
arrival.

Both seem to be benefiting from the well-documented psychological
phenomenon of “competitive longevity” that describes how having a strong
purpose or goal can extend life. Elderly people may hold on through illness or
frailty to reach a meaningful milestone. Wanting to outlive a rival is a specific,
potent form of this drive.

A general desire to witness a rival’s decline or death is well-recognised
emotionally. However, for politicians the strongest “will to live” motivation
may be the drive to control the narrative of their time in office.

Long-serving politicians spend their later years defending their legacies by
writing memoirs, giving interviews and revisiting history. A living peer
complicates this reputational burnishing, since they can contest the subject’s
claims. Outliving a key rival means having the last word.

In the Mbeki-Zuma case this dynamic is particularly rich. They have
intertwined and contested legacies and genuine mutual animosity.

One current example concerns mobilisation against undocumented migrants
in South Africa. As president in 2009, Zuma denounced xenophobic attacks.
Sadly, today’s anti-migrant marches appear to be backed by MK. When it
called on supporters to march against undocumented migrants, many
responded.

MK has confirmed it has been engaging with protest group March and March, its secretary-general defending the movement for holding peaceful protests allowed by the constitution. A partnership between the MK party and March and March now seems to be on the cards ahead of the November 2026 local government elections. 

For his part, Mbeki recently reminded citizens that the anti-apartheid struggle was fought by Africans across the continent who treated South Africa’s liberation as a collective mission. The growing wave of xenophobic sentiment ignores sacrifices made by African countries that sheltered exiles and stood behind the ANC during apartheid.

Politicians sometimes refuse to acknowledge their own failures because admission would damage the legacy they are psychologically invested in protecting.

Africa formed the centre of Mbeki’s presidential project after 1999, which resulted in the creation of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, the replacement of the Organisation of African Unity with the African Union, the establishment of the African peer review mechanism, and the inauguration of a Pan-African parliament. Hand-in-hand with Nigeria’s veteran leader, Olusegun Obasanjo, he advanced a developmentalist vision for the continent.

However, during Mbeki’s tenure, his stance on Zimbabwe proved his most consequential legacy. Under the rubric of “quiet diplomacy”, and amid accelerating land seizures, orchestrated state violence, systematic repression and currency collapse, Mbeki used conciliatory mediation in the hope of averting regional destabilisation — and perhaps to protect a fellow liberation movement.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai depicted Mbeki as a “dishonest broker”, and Mbeki’s refusal to confront Harare’s depredations sat uneasily beside his continental evangelism for governance reform. Most importantly, the haemorrhaging of Zimbabwe’s population fleeing state and economic collapse contributed to the combustible social terrain that produced the xenophobic conflagrations in South Africa that started in 2008.

Mbeki’s successors found themselves trapped in the contradiction that he created between an imperative of African fraternity abroad and an imported political volatility at home. However, in the spirit of competitive gerontocracy, Mbeki waded in with the observation that “Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa caused high levels of crime and unemployment, not illegal immigrants”.

In some respects it is heartwarming to discover that politicians like Mbeki and Zuma are still alive and kicking in their declining years. The trouble is that they are no longer just kicking each other.


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

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Presidents and patriarchy

ANTHONY BUTLER | Patriarchy can create unexpected paths to power for women leaders

Female politicians may exploit sexist assumptions to emerge as consensus candidates in divided systems

First published in Business Day

May 29, 2026

Women around the world sometimes observe that there are potential costs toalways having a man as national leader. Bias has historically filtered out capable women, while the best candidate is surely more likely to emerge when the full population is genuinely in contention.

A democracy better reflects its people when leadership is no longer drawnfrom only one half of the population, and this strengthens citizens’ sense ofinclusion and trust in institutions.

Women bring different life experiences to the policy process, especially when it comes to healthcare, workplace discrimination and reproductive rights.

Some political science research controversially suggests women lawmakers tend to be more collaborative. Gender-diverse leadership teams in both politics and business arguably produce better decision-making outcomes.

If the path to power is harder for women, those who tread it may become more formidable than their male counterparts. British prime ministerMargaret Thatcher cultivated an iron lady persona deliberately, with voice coaching and a confrontational style, to neutralise prejudice about “female weakness”.

Germany’s Angela Merkel, quiet and methodical, outlasted rivals throughpatience and steely resolve. Merkel also benefited from an “underestimationadvantage” that gave her an informational edge: male politicians assumed shewas not a threat right up to the moment they were outmanoeuvred by her.

Sceptics claim it can’t happen here. South Africa’s constitution may be gender-progressive, but the country remains deeply patriarchal. Customary law, traditional leadership structures and social norms across all racial groups subordinate women. Gender-based violence rates are among the world’s highest, and women remain underrepresented in economic roles.

While these observations may be accurate, sexist assumptions about women’sweakness can in some circumstances create political opportunities. When twopowerful male-led factions are deadlocked, a woman can emerge preciselybecause she’s perceived as non-threatening.

The men involved may each prefer her to their rival, calculating that she will be malleable or easily removed. This patronising assumption is often what gets a woman leader through the door, after which she may prove anything but feeble. 

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia emerged partly because she was seen as less threatening to various factional interests after years of warlord-driven civil war. 

Cristina Kirchner in Argentina and Sirimavo Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka initially benefited from being seen as extensions of their husbands’ legacies, a form of reflected legitimacy that depended on patriarchal assumptions about women’s derivative power. 

Even Theresa May’s ascent to the British premiership in 2016 owed something to the way male Brexiteers attacked each other until she was the only one left standing. 

Women’s potential advantage can be redoubled when power is shared. National Assembly speaker Thoko Didiza’s name keeps appearing in ANC succession discussions because she is experienced and capable but also because she is perceived as less factionally divisive than Paul Mashatile or Fikile Mbalula — and also better suited to coalition dealmaking with other political parties. 

Women can exploit a “mother of the nation” framing in patriarchal societies, accessing a form of moral authority denied to men. They are perceived as above the dirty business of factional politics, as nurturers rather than competitors. This set of deeply patronising assumptions can be strategically useful for an ambitious politician. 

There is no risk-free way to the top, of course. Women still confront the “glass cliff” phenomenon, in which they are disproportionately chosen to lead organisations or countries during crises when men have declined the poisoned chalice or dodged the bullet. 

Nonetheless, the uncomfortable implication of this argument is that some women’s political advancement may depend not on overcoming patriarchy, but on exploiting it. 

Like any system of systematic misjudgement, patriarchy creates exploitable inefficiencies, and politically astute women can use these to get elected — and then, hopefully, to govern brilliantly. 

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

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From plurality to presidency

ANTHONY BUTLER | DA faces coalition challenge despite largest party hopes

Parties could back third-party candidate for president if it comes down to a power play

First published in Business Day

May 15, 2026

Newly elected Democratic Alliance (DA) federal leader Geordin Hill-Lewis made some striking remarks in his acceptance speech on 12 April. “The question”, he first asked, “is whether the DA can lead the country … Whether we can become the largest party in national government”. The new leader’s answer was a “resounding YES! Yes we can!”

He continued by setting out the “mission you have assigned to me: to grow the DA into the largest party in South Africa, and to lead a new national government.”

Reactions to the federal leader’s mission statement focused on the first element, with many commentators rightly observing that winning the biggest vote share will be a huge task.

Equally taxing, however, will be the second challenge with which Hill-Lewis conflates it: converting largest party status into the ultimate prize of leading national government.

After all, it is quite common in democracies for the largest party to find itself excluded from the governing coalition. Ideologically, it may sit at one end of a spectrum, allowing centrist and smaller parties to form alternative an “anyone but them” blocking coalition.

Smaller parties may prefer to coalesce together because doing avoids the condescension and disadvantage that befall a “junior partner”.

If the largest party rejects patronage politics, moreover, smaller resource-seeking parties that need to feed their impoverished activists and voters may simply decide to eat together.

Meanwhile we do not have a process for selecting a formateur – the person initially tasked with trying to form a government. This role is likely to fall by default to the state president elected within 14 days of the election outcome, and there is every chance that he or she will not be the leader of the largest party — especially if the largest party is the DA.

The formateur, as Cyril Ramaphosa has shown, gets to shape the initial proposal, the portfolio distribution, and the policy compromises that are on the table. This agenda-setting power matters because the first credible offer usually anchors subsequent negotiations.

A DA leader could perhaps assemble a “removal van” coalition forged primarily to eject the governing party rather than united round other shared commitments. The “moonshot pact”, the minefield of exploding egos through which John Steenhuisen picked his way, serves as a reminder of how dangerous such an enterprise can be.

Hill-Lewis’s speech suggests he has been tasked personally by his party with “leading a new national government”. He will, however, confront the most dismal question any ambitious but pinkish SA politician must ask. Can a white man like me really become state president?

Around the world, of course, party leaders quite often decide not to seek the premiership themselves and designate someone from their party who is more acceptable to potential coalition partners.

The most striking modern example is India in 2004. When a Congress Party-led coalition came to power, its chairperson Sonia Gandhi unexpectedly relinquished the prime ministership to Manmohan Singh. The official narrative centred on Gandhi’s “inner voice,” but the reality was more complex. Her Italian birth had become controversial and there were legal challenges being prepared against her eligibility. Singh was chosen precisely because he was a technocrat who could hold a fractious coalition together — he was respected, non-threatening to coalition partners, and lacking any independent power base.

The DA leader might likewise select a coalition-compatible presidential nominee while exercising real power himself behind the scenes. This Putinesque manoeuvre, of course, is also something an ailing African National Congress (ANC) is quite likely to attempt.

Finally, of course, there could always be an agreement among two equally matched parties, the DA and the ANC, to back a state president from a third party such as the Inkatha Freedom Party. President Velenkosini Hlabisa anyone?

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town