An open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa   Greetings Mr President, To act in this uncharacteristic manner is a desperate attempt to grab your highly contested and congested attention and redirect it to the voice of the voiceless. The fact that you cut your political teeth in the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), of which I remain an activist, gives me the assurance that you should care about the plight of black people.  It is not for me to remind you of your deeply…

Growing up, many boys are taught, directly or indirectly that a woman is like a child. Such teachings are part of the undocumented curriculum in initiation schools where men are taught that a woman must be protected, provided for, and guided. While on the surface this might sound like care or affection, beneath it lies a toxic message: that women are not fully autonomous adults. This flawed education quietly shapes the way many men interact with women throughout their lives,…

Have you ever experienced the hurt of a woman minimising your accomplishments, downplaying your successes, or discarding you? Pull Her Down Syndrome is the term for these challenging phenomena.More than a slight to the ego, it is a betrayal of sisterhood. All too frequently, women who question the status quo are labelled as “difficult” or “out of place.” This rejection might take the form of refusing support, exaggerating shortcomings, or covertly undermining one another to uphold established hierarchies, as Gender…

A high-level South African delegation is in Washington this week on a mission to rescue its ailing trade relationship with the United States. Last week, the African Union’s office in Washington convened dozens of African ambassadors to strategise a lobbying push for renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) – the key US law that grants sub-Saharan countries duty-free access to American markets. With AGOA’s expiry looming, countries across Africa are scrambling to make their case: Kenya’s top…

Every time a school removes pure mathematics, a girl who could have been an engineer, scientist, or innovator is told: ‘This path is not for you’. Mathematics is more than a subject on the timetable. It is the entry ticket to careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the very fields where South Africa struggles with skills shortages and where women remain underrepresented. When public schools, particularly those serving disadvantaged communities, quietly drop mathematics and offer only mathematical literacy,…

South Africa has fought hard to preserve its trade ties with the United States. President Cyril Ramaphosa even traveled to Washington to offer a “framework deal” that included buying American liquefied natural gas and investing around $3.3 billion in the U.S. economy.  But those overtures failed. On August 8, 2025, the United States imposed a sweeping 30% tariff on most South African exports, abruptly raising barriers on goods ranging from fruit to automobiles. The impact of this tariff hike is…

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). It is also the inaugural year for implementing the outcomes of the 2024 FOCAC Summit in Beijing.  In June, Changsha, Hunan Province, hosted a series of China-Africa engagements poised to deepen their ties further.  On 11 June, the Ministerial Meeting of Coordinators on the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of FOCAC took place in Changsha. Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter expressing…

In a world fraying under geopolitical tensions, legal asymmetry, and fragmented global governance, the launch of the International Organisation for Mediation (IOMed) in China’s Hong Kong on 30 May is much more than a diplomatic novelty. It is a strategic recalibration of how the Global South, particularly African nations, might resolve disputes without surrendering sovereignty or dignity.  This new institution, formed by 33 nations and jointly proposed by China and 18 others in 2022, offers an answer to an old…

The Constitutional Court of South Africa stands as a potent symbol of hard-won freedom, a gleaming architectural and jurisprudential rebuke to apartheid’s tyranny. Its rulings on socio-economic rights, dignity and equality promised a rupture from a past where the state – the colonial and apartheid corpus– stood irrevocably alienated from, and hostile to, the Black majority – the demos. However, the very foundation supporting this beacon exposes a troubling continuity: its heavy reliance on private, mostly foreign funding, routed through…

It’s important to lay down the foundation of knowledge and data about the extent of attacks on illegal immigrants in South Africa over the past decade or so. Many debates arise within the topics of migration, migrant rights, and the structures and systems when it comes to how wide the scope should be considered in determining the degrees of migrants’ legality in a state.   Globally, immigration debates have given rise to Nationalist parties rising in countries all over the world.…