After the deadline: what did anti-immigration marches actually achieve?
The goal was never subtle. The movement popularised a deadline of 30 June 2026 for all undocumented immigrants to leave South Africa, with its founder warning that supporters would take to the streets if the issue was not addressed by that date.
Public reason and restraint: where institutions fail
In South Africa, the Supreme Court of Appeal decided that poor, rural listeners could hear “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” chanted at rallies and understand it as historical symbolism. In Britain, authorities warned that the public cannot hear “pure cold rage” without risking violence.
Risk and reward: why we need to play with fire and pointed sticks
Humans lived through most of their history in an environment that rewarded those who prioritised the downside of risk.
The manual nobody handed Pretoria’s diplomats
There is a ritual that plays out every few months in Pretoria. A newly arrived political counsellor, three weeks into a posting, sits down for an introductory coffee and asks a version of the same question: who actually decides things here now?
I think, therefore I arm
I think I have been thinking. I accept that this is an odd thing to say. I am wise enough to know as much. I have never been a fool, and I keep senility at bay.
We copied the wrong country
South Africa’s post-liberation government leant heavily on the model for post-colonial economic redress in Malaysia. It chose wrong.
Mbalula reads the room – and takes aim at 2027
African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Fikile Mbalula told journalists at Luthuli House this week that the party had to “read the room correctly” on March and March, the anti-immigration movement that mobilised tens of thousands of South Africans on 30 June.
They shall live for evermore: Delville Wood 110 years later
On 15 July 1916, the 1st South African Infantry Brigade advanced into a square kilometre of wood on the outskirts of the village of Longueval, during what became known as “the battle of the Somme”. Six days later, of the 3,153 men who had entered the wood, 780 were able to walk. The rest were dead, wounded or missing, buried under earth that days earlier had been a stand of beech, oak, maple and hornbeam; with a name few South Africans had heard before: Delville Wood.
England really needs this World Cup
I am admittedly not a football buff, but when Bafana were (admirably) vanquished and Donald Trump goosed FIFA right in the CEO’s balloon knot, I was torn between supporting Norway and supporting England. Now they’re playing each other on Sunday.
Time to jettison the “net zero” illusion
Following last week’s reshuffle of the GNU cabinet, South Africa has a new minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment, the DA’s David Maynier. The country also needs a new approach to climate change: one that is far more realistic than the “net zero” illusion and helps achieve the GNU’s promise of growth, jobs and renewed industrialisation.