This has been a tough year for South Africa. In this 27th year of our democracy we have come to fully understand that citizens aren’t simply bystanders; they are active participants who are able to use their votes and their voices to change the trajectory of the country.
After the terrible events of July, it was impossible to ignore the fact that ordinary people had been killed because of a set of petty battles over economic and political resources within the ruling party. South Africans woke up to the realisation that they are at the mercy of the group of moral zombies who occupy the ANC.
Those who died in the looting and the mid-year chaos stoked by Zuma-aligned people were casualties of decades of ANC-driven economic neglect. They didn’t die over big ideas and revolutionary acts. They died because they were desperate for groceries and goods they might never otherwise have afforded.
So, in a year in which there has been little to celebrate, the ANC’s decline at the polls in local elections has provided some good news by demonstrating that the party can no longer count on the loyalty of those in the electorate whom it has abused for so long. Those who voted (and it is true that there were many who simply stayed away out of frustration) gave a clear message that they had had enough.
Their actions came on the heels of a larger shift in public debate. Whereas in the past, the media has been seen as a powerful champion of people’s rights to know what politicians are doing...
A British science journalist-turned-attorney who initiated a lawsuit that saw a Harvard University-affiliated cancer centre pay $15 million (11 million) to settle claims of alleged data misreprese...