The hard road after Zondo
As we seek to gauge the full significance of the Zondo commission’s second report, a critical question arises: Where do we go from here?
Stories by: New Frame
The ugly side of the beautiful game
Football cannot cure all ills. Fans and spectators need to take back control of the narrative around matches and expose those who would manipulate crowds for political and personal gain.
The EFF surrenders a key progressive principle
The party’s reckless descent into xenophobic politics is an alarming development. Building a counter-politics of solidarity is essential.
A predatory elite aims for further licence
When the kleptocrats gun for the Constitution and judiciary, they cynically dress their wholly destructive desire for elite impunity in the language of general emancipation.
CAF must stand up to European bullying
The 2021 Afcon has generated the same old voices expressing the same old reluctance to release their African players for the continental showpiece. The time for tolerating this disdainful treatment is over.
Renewing hope after another bad year
As our social crisis escalates year after year, we are perilously close to an entirely unviable situation. There is a way out, but it can only be built in the realm of the popular.
A plague on both their houses
Neither the kleptocrats nor the liberals offer a viable or a just way forward. But we should not be fooled into thinking they are our only choices.
A crisis of leadership in South African football
The Premier Soccer League keeps on stumbling from one blunder to the next. And while its leaders can be replaced, the question is whether the damage they are causing can be fixed.
Xenophobia never rests
The possibility that thousands of Zimbabweans will find their presence in South Africa rendered illegal within a year demands a response rooted in organised solidarity.
Our veins do not end in our bodies
Covid can only be contained with global solidarity. Shutting borders is as irrational as it is prejudicial.
Go to hell, Shell
The explosion of rage in South Africa in response to the multinational company exploring for oil and gas in the ocean off the Wild Coast is entirely justified.
Emancipatory hopes run out of road
The outcome of the recent elections and the searing testimony at the Human Rights Commission inquiry into the July riots illuminate the collapse of an emancipatory vision.
A little man in a big moment
FW de Klerk presided over a bloody transition from apartheid. This history, and his failure to reckon with it, leave a legacy that is irredeemably compromised.
The wheel turns again
This week’s election marks significant shifts in electoral politics. As support for the ANC and the DA ebbs, the Left is absent and a new Right slouches into plainer view.
All of them must go!
Monday’s elections offer scant hope for a way out of our escalating crisis. Reality demands a rigorous pessimism of the intellect if we are to generate a viable optimism of the will.
Shameful complicity in the name of ‘human rights’
As eSwatini’s armed forces continue killing and crippling pro-democracy protesters and ordinary citizens, powerful actors muddy the waters.
Anti-intellectualism festers
The fiasco at the Judicial Service Commission shows that the anti-intellectualism of the kleptocrats retains a hold on important sites in public life.
Democratic degeneration
South Africa’s once grand hopes have collapsed into pettiness, cynicism and a lack of emancipatory vision. Renewal can only come from a democratic reconfiguration of the popular.
Injustice stalks dissent
As three activists walked free after six months in jail, it was again clear that the ANC, in cahoots with the police and justice system, keeps grinding popular dissent against the rock of repression.
Not even the dead
Our history of violence accumulates into the present as time slips by, and taints the future too. There must be decisive action against all political murders, old and new alike.
Escalating Sinophobia in SA’s media
The recent eruption of Sinophobia in the national media has been a shameful illustration of the weakness of our public sphere. We need to do better.