Here’s a workable five-point plan for beating corruption

| Sep 2025

Daily Maverick

Comrade Leadership, forget the pillars, strategies, committees and action plans. Leave verbs alone: ‘strengthen, empower and ensure’. They are better off left lying low in the Oxford Dictionary.

Our future head of state, Her Excellency Mokonyane

| Sep 2025

Daily Maverick

Under Her Excellency Nomvula Mokonyane, the poverty line is banished by decree. Stunting becomes a museum exhibit labelled ‘Never Again’. The new social compact is simple: One Family — One Chicken Braai Pack.

All Hail, Mr Brown — a mogul who hustles in magistrates’ corridors and high court passages

| Oct 2025

Daily Maverick

My leader, Mr Brown may not be a Sandton tycoon, but he is every inch a legitimate entrepreneur and philanthropist — at least on paper and court papers.

My leader, in South Africa even jogging has politics

| Oct 2025

Daily Maverick

In the interests of a healthier South Africa and safeguarding both the Presidency and the pavements of Johannesburg, I suggest you convene an Advisory Panel on Jogging.

Reinstate the evergreen Senzo Mchunu

| Oct 2025

Daily Maverick

Amid the absurdity, there stands Mchunu — the man who manages without delegating, commands without committees, and issues directives even while his commissioner is on holiday or napping.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: ‘Big Five’ saga is beginning to resemble a political bedtime story with a script that insults our intelligence

| Nov 2025

Daily Maverick

My leader, allow me to dim the lights and introduce Khumalo Productions™ — the newest studio in the Republic, specialising in surveillance cinema, high-stakes voyeurism, and, apparently, national security storytelling.

The Madlanga Commission may well be the courtroom, but the ANC is on trial

| Nov 2025

Daily Maverick

The Madlanga Commission and the Ad Hoc Committee on Judicial Capture and Political Interference in the SAPS have become a public trial of the ANC itself. What began as an inquiry into law enforcement rot now reads like an ANC postmortem. At every turn of decay, the fingerprints of party loyalists are found on the steering wheel.

Obesity Breakthrough: Oral Tablet Unveiled For South Africa

| Nov 2025

The Bulrushes

Johannesburg – Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant, has unveiled new trial results showing that its oral semaglutide tablet, a potential new treatment option for obesity in South Africans, matches the effectiveness of the Wegovy injection. Experts warn that the condition (obesity) is a chronic disease driving hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and more than 230 health complications.

As the death list gets longer, my name is…

| Dec 2025

Daily Maverick

Mr President, will you meet the families of those who suffered under your watch next week? Offer a public acknowledgement of your neglect and set the path to justice in motion – not platitudes, but healing and accountability? Ah, Chief Dwasaho! As I sit in the hushed echo of my writing desk, I sense the whispers of those long gone. I write with the dead standing behind me. They gather in your shadow, too, like unburied truths.

Diabetes At A Crossroads: Science Versus Access

| Dec 2025

The Bulrushes

I do not know how you would respond, since you left us on 4 January 2021. These four years have been marked by sorrow, pain and anguish. I know Covid-19 claimed your life, but your underlying illness, type 2 diabetes, ultimately signed your death certificate. Hardly a year later, my brother succumbed to the same enemy, leaving behind five children.

South Africa: Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu – a Modest Christmas Cheer for Green Shoots

| Dec 2025

Daily Maverick

I remain cautious, my leader. Curious, but unconvinced. Willing to look, but not ready to celebrate. In a country where hope has been repeatedly weaponised against the poor, undue optimism is not just naive, it is irresponsible. Ah, Chief Dwasaho! I come bearing gifts. I have hounded you all year for failing to do right by the people of this land. We mourned the deaths of whistleblowers together, or was it just me?

Letter To Mahlamba Ndlopfu

| Jan 2026

The Bulrushes

Ah, Chief Dwasaho! As I write this letter, cutting short my holiday, I scan the wires and wait for a media statement from Pretoria following the confirmed illegal rendition of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by United States military forces. This act has drawn global scrutiny and divided world opinion. None arrives. No condemnation from the head of state. No measured outrage from the Office of the Presidency. No assertion of principle on behalf of the Republic.

Bhekisisa Mncube Reviews The Book Titled ‘Malema’ By Micah Reddy And Pauli Van Wyk

| Jan 2026

The Bulrushes

Malema, a book by Micah Reddy and Pauli van Wyk, published by Tafelberg, embodies the duality of compelling investigation alongside historical gaps and editorial missteps. It is a rigorously reported account that brings valuable insights about the riches of Malema, but could reach greater heights with tighter historical framing and more disciplined editing. Julius Malema is the founder and President of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: This wasn’t just a diplomatic win, it was a geopolitical masterclass

| May 2025

Daily Maverick

But for me, this was always gonna be the Ramaphosa show, the master negotiator who outsmarted, outwitted, outflanked, and outmanoeuvred the then-National Party chief negotiator, Roelf Meyer.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: Mzwanele Manyi has redefined the term ‘political reinvention’

| May 2025

Daily Maverick

Just for the record, neither Jimmy nor Mzwanele is fazed by the latest development, which makes him look like a crosstitute. This makes sense because being “former” is no longer a setback — it’s a brand.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu — Now is the winter of our discontent

| Jun 2025

Daily Maverick

Our economy is wobbling through yet another tremor, an earthquake clocking in at 5.6 on the economic Richter scale, just as the country flounders without a discernible compass.

Spare us from Big Men with big wallets, bigger lies and biggest egos

| Jun 2025

Daily Maverick

Just breathing alone is an invitation for untold suffering at the hands of Big Men with Bigger Lies, Biggest Egos and even the Thickest Wallets.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: Diabetes is on the march, ushering in death like a thief in the night

| Jun 2025

Daily Maverick

Before the Israel-US-Iran skirmishes, I had already made a poor judgement call. I accepted Novo Nordisk’s courtesy to attend the 85th American Diabetes Association (ADA) Congress, which concluded this past Monday in Chicago, US. I should have known better.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: How do Comrades, guilty as sin, walk away scot-free?

| Jul 2025

Daily Maverick

Then, the news broke that the ANC’s National Disciplinary Committee — the NDC — (what discipline?) had finally delivered its verdict in the matter of the ANC vs State Capture Quartet. Quartet, as in four, my leader: Malusi Gigaba, Zizi Kodwa, David Mahlobo and Cedric Frolick. Once upon a time, the infamous “Gupta Four” ran this country like a family spaza shop, allegedly.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: This is ‘a matter of grave national security concern’

| Jul 2025

Daily Maverick

All we’ve heard from the police top brass is: “It wasn’t me, wasn’t me, of course it wasn’t me.” It sounds like a national chorus of off-key Shaggy impersonators; they keep denying, deflecting, and ducking while the truth skulks in the shadows, smoking a Cuban cigar.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: My jacaranda tree is a living metaphor for a country in flux

| Jul 2025

Daily Maverick

So here we stand, with a ministry housing three ministers — real, acting, and acting-in-waiting — plus two deputy ministers, namely Shela Boshielo and Cassel Mathale, both ANC acolytes.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu — this week you finally found your backbone

| Jul 2025

Daily Maverick

Hhawu, Matamela! You? Fire someone? And not just anyone – uGal herself! Minister Dr Nobuhle Nkabane, once the proud guardian of our nation’s knowledge factories, is now reduced to a political footnote without a farewell bouquet.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: Lieutenant-General Mkhwanazi turned July into Justice Month

| Jul 2025

Daily Maverick

This is where you come in, my leader. South Africans aren’t just hungry for justice — they’re ravenous. When we say “let the law take its course”, we don’t mean at a snail’s pace with a flat tyre. We mean heads must roll, orange overalls must be fitted, and dockets must stop vanishing like tenders in the wind.

Land Tenure, Inequality, and Climate Vulnerability: How Insecure Land Rights Heighten Farmers’ Vulnerability to Climate-Related Shocks in Post-Apartheid South Africa

| Aug 2025

Climate Change Writers

Despite three decades of democratic rule and extensive land reform legislation, tenure insecurity remains pervasive across South Africa's rural landscapes. The country's land reform programme, designed around three pillars of restitution, redistribution, and tenure reform, has struggled to address the scale and complexity of historical dispossession.

Book Review: Breasts, etc. By Nthikeng Mohlele (TK)

Reviews

| Jun 2025

The Bulrushes

It is a love story that transcends breast worship, old age, death, and decay, not to mention the apocalypse that never occurred.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: How the flighty have fallen as Shivambu slinks off for a duck

| Jun 2025

Daily Maverick

Shivambu was the party’s unelected fifth secretary-general since its launch in 2023. The MK party treats its SGs like disposable wicketkeepers, swapping them out at the slightest fumble. In truth, the writing was on the wall before the umpire’s finger went up. Duduzile had drawn the dagger first, and other MK cadres had long been dissatisfied with Shivambu’s style of play.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: Can we truly keep celebrating Freedom Day while things fall apart?

| Apr 2025

Polity.org.za

When I floated my “false dawn” analogy to senior scribe Lucas “Styles” Ledwaba, a man whose pen still carries the weight of thunder, he offered no comment, no acknowledgement. Instead, he sent me a track: “Mickey Mouse Freedom” by the late reggae maestro Lucky Dube, a man, the irony of ironies, gunned down by the very criminals our liberation movement promised to vanquish.

OPINION | Bhekisisa Mncube: Is South Africa ready for a white president?

| Apr 2025

News24

The unresolved National Question, beyond race, also encompasses class and gender dimensions. Thus, it becomes a cocktail that serves as an ever-present undercurrent in contemporary South African politics, frequently obscured by the more visible and urgent crises of rising inequality, poverty, and land hunger.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: Yes, Mr Trump, bad things are happening in South Africa

| May 2025

Daily Maverick

Even our serenity was stolen — the right to hear birdsong without surveillance, to wade in the river without suspicion, to watch mountains in stillness without fear of displacement. It was the freedom to laugh, dance, sit beneath a tree, and hear the soft, jubilant racket of children at play, lost forever.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu — the oracle has delivered four post-Cyril scenarios

| May 2025

Daily Maverick

You see, my leader, fictional renewal is easy. It only requires slogans, Instagram-ready images and conference resolutions that gather dust before the ink dries. Real rebirth? That is different. It is messy, bloody and humbling. It is about scraping the rot from the marrow, reconnecting not with conference delegates and caterers but with street committees, stokvels, minibus taxi ranks, informal traders and, yes, the tired grandmothers queuing for social grants.

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: GNU – No Value Added

| May 2025

Daily Maverick

Nine months into this much-fancied GNU, there has been no joy. Only the unrelenting weeping and gnashing of teeth for the “leader of society”, the African National Congress (ANC).

Letter to Mahlamba Ndlopfu: Can we truly keep celebrating Freedom Day while things fall apart?

| Apr 2025

Daily Maverick

I wish to pause and invite every citizen, from tavern philosophers to conservative podcasters, progressive YouTubers and TikTok pundits to reflect deeply on the future of our homeland.

Mr President you sold us a false New Dawn as we black people congregate at the graveyard to bury our own

| Apr 2025

Daily Maverick

My leader, I hate being a bearer of bad news while you are fighting on all fronts, with the Helen Zille Infantry Battalion on the right and Uncle Sam’s mood swings on the left.

South Africa: Cape Town, A City Under Fire

| Apr 2025

Climate Change Writers

Overall, the City of Cape Town says its fire teams have responded to over 13,000 incidents between October 2023 and January 2024. This marked an increase of more than 10% from the previous year

GNU Budget Crisis: ANC And DA Need To Grow Up, Fast, writes Bhekisisa Mncube

| Apr 2025

The Bulrushes

A minority government will neither restore investor confidence nor renew the “people’s contract” because such a formation is inherently fragile, heightening anxiety each time the National Assembly considers a vote of no confidence in the President.

Professor William Gumede’s Rhetoric Undermines GNU Partners, writes Bhekisisa Mncube

| Apr 2025

The Bulrushes

Professor Gumede's opinion piece, ANC failures tarnish its GNU partner (Sunday Times, 30 March 2025), fails the most basic test of public discourse, it makes sweeping claims not supported by evidence and breaks the cardinal rule: play the ball, not the man

The Human Cost of Climate Disasters

Op-eds

| Apr 2025

Climate Change Writers (4000+ volunteer writers from 140+ countries.) Our mission is to unite a global network of passionate writers dedicated to telling the climate change narrative.

In summary, over the past three years, KwaZulu-Natal has endured multiple flood disasters that have collectively resulted in more than 500 fatalities and displaced tens of thousands. Scientists warn that extreme rainfall events are becoming more frequent as the climate warms, doubling the likelihood of occurrences like the 2022 floods. Reuters reported in 2022 that the World Weather Attribution group analysed weather data and digital simulations to compare today's climate with that of the pre-Industrial Revolution era in the late 1800s. "The results showed that an extreme rainfall episode such as this one [the 2022 floods] can now be expected to occur approximately once every 20 years," a study showed.

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Strained US-SA relations: What’s really at the crux of it?

Till femicide do them part

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Interfaith Collective Launches Ground-breaking GBV Prevention and Mitigation Strategy

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