The chant “Kill the Boer/Dubul’ibhunu,” which originated as a liberation struggle song during the anti‑apartheid era, has re‑emerged in South Africa’s public discourse in ways that far exceed its historical meaning. Once embedded in a repertoire of symbolic resistance against colonial and apartheid domination, the chant has increasingly been appropriated and instrumentalised by extremist actors across the ideological spectrum. In this process, it has been transformed into a political weapon—one that fuels polarised narratives, distorts South Africa’s social realities, and…

This year marks 66 years of the Sharpeville Massacre. Since 1994, more often than not, some new kind of commission of inquiry is established to respond to some major crisis faced by the government. The commissions are often framed as moments of reckoning — institutional spaces where ‘truth’ is meant to lead to ‘justice’ and accountability. In 1960, the apartheid government set up the Wessels Commission of Inquiry “to investigate and report on the occurrences in the Districts of Vereeniging,…

A person sits across from a social worker, struggling to articulate the confusion of the past few hours. Sometimes the crisis follows an act of violence. At other times, it is the result of weeks or months of emotional strain that have gradually become unbearable. By the time individuals reach this point, they are often carrying far more than the immediate event. Fear, exhaustion, anger and uncertainty converge, and the future can suddenly feel difficult to imagine. Scenes like this…

The Covid-19 pandemic, disruptive technologies, and current developments in changing global geopolitics, specifically the US travel ban on 21 countries and counting, as well as the raging war in the Middle East, have led to a dire situation that requires repositioning of internationalisation in the higher education landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional internationalisation activities, further stretching already limited resources and impacting international student and staff mobility. To date, delays in study visa processing continue to pose a major obstacle…

I am writing this op-ed not as a political scientist but as a decolonial scholar, rooted in organic intellectualism. I was born in Soweto and now reside in a neighbourhood where the state remains invisible, arriving silently in the form of a rates bill or a traffic fine, never as a boot through the door. This duality shapes how I interpret the State of the Nation Address and observe 550 soldiers being deployed to our townships for a year-long operation.…

Debates and decisions made in the Two Sessions on policies and market access could benefit Africa’s development A very significant event in China’s political calendar is underway in Beijing and, as usual, it is more than optics. The fourth sessions of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) and the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the country’s top legislative and advisory bodies, will set the course for China’s direction over the year and beyond. Commonly known…

Moment in Energy History-Part 2 South Africa has chosen to liberalise its electricity sector at the precise historical moment that the global energy order is being structurally rewritten—not by governments, not by regulators, but by the world’s most capitalised private corporations quietly building their own power stations and walking away from the grid entirely. The Electricity Regulation Amendment Act (ERAA) of 2024 is not merely a policy error of local dimension; it is a category mistake of global consequence, timed…

The South African state is currently engaged in a high-stakes gamble with the nation’s industrial backbone. Under the banner of “modernisation” and “liberalisation,” the Electricity Regulation Amendment Act (ERAA) is being touted as the panacea for the rolling blackouts which first appeared in 2008. In his 2026 State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted that these reforms—specifically the unbundling of Eskom and the creation of an independent Transmission System Operator (TSO)—will proceed at all costs. In his budget…

Flooding, storms, droughts, and heatwaves have become common occurrences across the globe. Each time an extreme weather or climate event strikes, the same question arises: is this climate change? Weather and climate experts are often cautious in answering this directly, because linking a specific event to climate change requires detailed scientific analysis known as attribution studies. These studies examine how human-driven climate change alters the likelihood or intensity of specific extreme weather events. The findings are increasingly clear. The 2015–2017…

Ubuntu as Moral Compass in the Face of Violence South Africa, celebrated for its diverse cultures and rich heritage, continues to face one of the highest incidences of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in the world. In KwaZulu-Natal alone, the Centre for Community Impact’s 2023 report indicates that over a third of the women have experienced some form of violence, from verbal abuse to physical and sexual assault. Beyond the numbers lies the lived experience of pain, fear, and social marginalisation. Ubuntu…