Are foreign powers funding the ongoing nationwide protests?
It is concerning to hear the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ronald Lamola, insinuate that the ongoing anti-immigrant protests are being coordinated by foreign powers allegedly displeased with South Africa’s decision to bring a case against the State of Israel before the International Court of Justice. While he has not mentioned the names of those political actors, it is clear that he refers to both Israel and the United States.
The ruffle of a simple man
Noah’s friend, Raphael van Wyk, is visiting us. Afrikaans in origin, he was given his first name by a mother who hoped he would become an artist.
Don’t fear the machine. Fear those who want to govern it
AI is the most consequential tool of our age. The greatest danger it poses is not what it will do to us, but what governments will do to save us.
Gutting firms of HR may save the future of work
Ordinarily not predisposed to heaping upon praise on tech bros, I can’t help but think one of them has just revealed how to save the future of work. At a recent Fortune event, Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow remarked that he’d just axed his entire human resources (HR) division.
Will the PIE Amendment Bill solve land invasions?
The government claims that an escalating crisis of property hijackings and unlawful land invasions – long encouraged by the PIE Act – will be curtailed by the PIE Amendment Bill, which creates a better “balance.” This claim is false.
Public pressure can help bust corruption
In the seminal case now known as Glenister Two, the Constitutional Court laid down that SA law requires “a body outside executive control” to deal with corruption effectively. The motivation for this ruling is clearly that placing such an entity within or under executive control is incompatible with the independence that is necessary to enable the anti-corruption entity to do its work properly.
A restrained DA does not have what it takes to fix Joburg
Last week in The Common Sense, David Ansara outlined what it would take to arrest Johannesburg’s accelerating collapse.
The promised crackdown on illegal immigration: a show of force, but that is all
On Sunday evening, when President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on illegal immigration, he had two tasks.
The US War with Iran – it was supposed to be easier than this…
There is a particular kind of hubris that afflicts powerful states on the eve of a war they expect to win quickly. It is the conviction that the enemy will behave according to the planner’s model rather than its own military and defence strategies. The Trump administration carried that conviction into Iran on 28 February 2026, and it has spent every week since discovering, expensively, how wrong it was.
Ramaphosa’s forked tongue on immigration
The president condemns xenophobic violence while validating the very falsehoods that fuel it. The mob he warns against is the mob his own party helped create.