Category: Leadership

With 85 days until South Africa’s local elections, polling from the Social Research Foundation suggests the DA could govern Tshwane alone alongside the Freedom Front Plus, giving Helen Zille unexpected leverage in coalition talks. The DA now polls at 42% in Johannesburg and 43% in Tshwane, against an ANC low of 18%. Zille says any…

Eskom chairman Mteto Nyati has warned that South Africa has slid quietly into lawlessness, with offences from jumped traffic lights to illegal electricity connections increasingly treated as normal. He links the shift to an overcorrection from apartheid era controls, but says no country succeeds on a foundation of chaos. His comments coincide with Eskom’s own…

South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation, the $220 billion (about R3.7 trillion) fund managing pensions for 1.2 million civil servants, is now without any executive leadership after a wave of suspensions and resignations, writes Justice Malala. CEO Patrick Dlamini and CIO August van Heerden are suspended, board chair David Masondo has resigned, and Finance Minister Enoch…

Elon Musk, briefly the world’s first trillionaire, has told The Economist that AI could soon surpass combined human intelligence, potentially rendering work “optional” within a decade. In a rare 90-minute interview, the Tesla and SpaceX boss called for governments to issue “universal high income” as machines take over jobs, while admitting he is unsure whether…

Roelf Meyer – the veteran negotiator who helped architect South Africa’s 1994 transition – took up his post as ambassador to Washington this week, replacing Ebrahim Rasool, who was expelled last year. His top priority: getting Trump to revoke the February 2025 executive order that cut US aid to Pretoria over the (disputed) “white genocide”…

South Africa’s policing crisis is being tested by a new debate over whether more power should remain with SAPS or be shared with capable local authorities. The proposed SAPS Amendment Bill promises reforms such as integrity testing and merit-based recruitment, but critics argue that centralised control has failed to address firearm tracing, DNA backlogs and…

Bloomberg Opinion columnist Adrian Wooldridge argues that despite recurring predictions of its demise, populism is entrenched worldwide and evolving rather than declining. While leaders like Orban and Farage have stumbled, the AfD, France’s National Rally, and Portugal’s Chega are surging, and populists already govern across Europe and Latin America. Wooldridge identifies four emerging strains: classic…

The DA’s internal row over John Steenhuisen’s criticism of Tony Leon and Resolve Communications has reignited claims of “state capture” – including over Elon Musk’s Starlink, whose local rollout remains tangled in South Africa’s ownership laws. Veteran journalist John Matisonn argues the real scandal isn’t that ministers meet business people, but that they don’t listen…

The Economist’s Bartleby column unpacks the research on what makes a question effective. From “boomerasking” (asking just to talk about yourself) to the “curveball” questions that move share prices on earnings calls, The Economist explores all. For South African boardrooms and investor briefings, where tough, consistent questioning is often the difference between real oversight and…

South Africa’s recent anti-immigration marches, and the fear and violence that followed, have damaged the country’s standing across Africa and beyond, write Solly Moeng and Tshepo Matseba. They argue this isn’t a communications problem to be spun away, but a governance one: the state must reassert control over immigration enforcement, crack down on the corruption…

Geordin Hill-Lewis used his first major policy address to frame South African politics as entering a “second transition” — the end of ANC one-party dominance since the 2024 GNU. He argues this widens space for the DA but breeds volatility: factionalism, vigilante groups like Operation Dudula, and a weakening state authority. Political analyst Jonathan Katzenellenbogen…