

Marius Roodt
Marius Roodt is currently deputy editor of the Daily Friend and also consults on IRR campaigns. This is his second stint at the Institute, having returned after spells working at the Centre for Development and Enterprise and a Johannesburg-based management consultancy. He has also previously worked as a journalist, an analyst for a number of foreign governments, and spent most of 2005 and 2006 driving a scooter around London. Roodt holds an honours degree from the Rand Afrikaans University (now the University of Johannesburg) and an MA in Political Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand.
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Articles By This Author

Ramaphosa’s Rand Revolt moment
- By Marius Roodt
- . Jul 15, 2021
The job of a historian is to discern links between seemingly unrelated events. Some would argue that the decision by the Americans to support Islamist

Want to save South Africa? Save her cities
- By Marius Roodt
- . Jul 10, 2021
Stories about the decline of South Africa’s rural towns have been common for some time. But we are now seeing that even South Africa’s great

Is racism the problem?
- By Marius Roodt
- . Jun 19, 2021
Many in the chattering classes will tell you the ‘Rainbow Nation’ – a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe South Africa in all
South Africa’s almost non-existent thin blue line
- By Marius Roodt
- . Jun 1, 2021
The news that newly proposed firearms legislation would no longer recognise self-defence as a valid reason to own a firearm, has been met with anger,

South Africa’s political landscape – portents for October?
- By Marius Roodt
- . May 29, 2021
South Africa is heading to elections in October to choose new municipal governments across the country (assuming that they aren’t postponed as a consequence of

Which has aged better?
- By Marius Roodt
- . May 8, 2021
Throwing Copper, the album by the rock band, Live, was released on 26 April 1994, the day before South Africa’s first all-race election, making democratic

Hopelessness and hopefulness to be found in Cambodia – and parallels with SA
- By Marius Roodt
- . Feb 27, 2021
Book review: Cambodia: From Pol Pot to Hun Sen and Beyond Sebastian Strangio (2020) Cambodia is one of the most fascinating countries on Earth. It

Mboweni plays the race card to South Africa’s detriment
- By Marius Roodt
- . Feb 13, 2021
On Wednesday a number of strange missives were dispatched by the minister of finance, Tito Mboweni, from (presumably) the wilderness of Magoebaskloof where he has

Can independents make an impact?
- By Marius Roodt
- . Feb 6, 2021
Last week Mmusi Maimane, the former leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA) and now Chief Activist of the One South Africa movement, announced that his

Super Wednesday – Fleeting glimpse of future trends, or much ado about nothing?
- By Marius Roodt
- . Nov 14, 2020
On Wednesday South Africa held nearly 100 by-elections. The large number of by-elections was because they had all been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic