The president does not get to choose whether to follow the rule of law, he takes an oath to do so In an otherwise insightful piece, Jonny Steinberg poses the wrong question when he asks, “Does he [President Cyril Ramaphosa] really want an efficient justice system if...

In the carefully chosen words of the Constitutional Court, “(t)here can be no gainsaying that corruption threatens to fell at the knees virtually everything we hold dear and precious in our hard-won constitutional order”. These words are in paragraph 166 of the joint...

By Paul Hoffman  The part that Paul Mashatile played in the appointment of John Lamola as the new SAA CEO is a direct conflict between the interests of the ANC in cadre deployment and his overall official duties as deputy president. The canary in the coal mine for...

Paul Hoffman 27 February 2025 Paul Hoffman notes that in 2004 ConCourt stripped whites of their protection against racial discrimination The fluidity in politics worldwide seems to be stimulating push-back in SA against the 140 odd race based laws introduced since...

By Paul Hoffman About R60-billion a year would have come in from the additional VAT in the aborted proposal to raise it by 2%. The loot of State Capture is estimated in trillions. There has been a wide range of different reactions to the postponement of the Budget...

March version of budget should address absence of new investment Your columnist Peter Bruce is spot on when he points out that the proposed hiking of VAT “as the only answer to a 20-year-old funding problem is intellectually lazy, politically disconnected and morally...

ANC continues destructive national democratic revolution opposed by GNU partners 17 February 2025 - 20:58 After it was able to muster only about 40% of the votes cast in the May 2024 general election the ANC was obliged to invite other parties represented in...

Bringing the crooked to book requires a single agency outside executive control David Lewis is on a dangerous, unconstitutional, and ill-informed trajectory when it comes to formulating the long-overdue reform of the anti-corruption capacity of the criminal justice...

By Paul Hoffman  While secure peace, sustainable progress and shared prosperity remain the goals of good governance everywhere, it is undeniable that these desirable qualities do not flourish in any society in which endemic grand corruption has taken root and goes...

Conceding that a constitutional amendment is required to achieve a political aim and then to pass ordinary legislation to achieve that aim is legally questionable Back in 2014-2019, when the ANC and EFF between them had more than two-thirds of the seats in SA’s...

Peter Bruce refers in passing to the “elasticity of the red lines” which, if crossed, would signal the possible demise of the 10 party coalition that governs SA (“Chilling warning from the CEO of Toyota”, January 30). According to the much-maligned “statement of...

By Paul Hoffman If more politicians took their oaths of office more seriously, the freedom obtained in the Struggle would not be nearly as incomplete as it manifestly is in 2025. Too few politicians appreciate that they are constrained by the Constitution. Thirty...

By Paul Hoffman There are presumably more law-abiding citizens in the ANC than corrupt or soft-on-corruption individuals. The silent majority will have to assert itself if the ANC is to renew. The alternative is to perish. Those with long memories will recall then...

14 January 2025 - 16:18 The many words and pious promises in the ANC annual January 8 statement, delivered by its leader on Saturday, boil down to the terse take-home message that if the ANC is to avoid perishing at the polls it needs to take action to renew itself...