The Emfuleni By-election: Is the DA’s big breakthrough close?
Last week, the DA took a leap in winning, for the first time, a township ward that has almost only black voters.
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Not all cultures are equal
Cultural relativism began as an attempt to understand societies more sympathetically. Over time it became something else: a reluctance to defend liberal values at all. A society that refuses to judge oppressive norms eventually loses the confidence required to defend
Joburg’s fairytale budget: the madness has to stop now
Last Wednesday, the ANC-led coalition of doom in Johannesburg was meant to table the City’s 2026/27 medium-term budget. Instead, it presented a fairytale – one that could only be produced in the ANC’s unique school of mathematics.
Judging Ramaphosa: Impeachment committee chair elected
Makone Maja and Nicholas Lorimer discuss the election of an impeachment committee chairman for Ramaphosa's impeachment trial. They also discuss who funds NUMSA's leader, and Liam Jacobs returning to the DA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrbhsOahu1M
Liberalism: in search of an idea – Part 1
This is the first of a three-part series looking at the philosophy behind the concept of liberalism and the history that gave rise to it. The series is based on a section of my recently completed MPhil project. Michael Freeden,
An updated worldview
US President Trump’s unconventional style distracts attention from how long-established geopolitical presumptions no longer apply.
Helen Zille: angel, witch, gogo or leader?
Women in power, from Joan of Arc to Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton, have always had a tough job bearing the judgements of their followers and detractors.
The problem is your “antidote” race laws, Mr Van der Rheede
Christo van der Rheede’s latest somewhat vituperative response to me – republished by the Daily Friend yesterday– is revealing. Instead of answering the central question, he accuses me of caricature, polemic, “ideological compression”, and fabricating the FW de Klerk Foundation’s
Apartheid as a crime against humanity
“Well, gentlemen, which one of you wants this company to be remembered as the I G Farben of apartheid?”