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African National Congress (ANC) lost its long-held majority in the recent national elections in South Africa. While President Ramaphosa continues to be a pivotal actor in the new landscape, the political stakes have become higher as the new government sets about solving the dire economic issues that ordinary citizens face.
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South Africa goes to the polls this week, and there is much to watch: a new electoral system, the fate of the African National Congress, a potential coalition, the promise of economic renewal, and a foreign policy agenda. The winner will have to get to work at once to tackle these simultaneous challenges and ambitions.
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South Africa has just celebrated the 30th anniversary of its epic elections in 1994 which marked the end of apartheid rule. President de Klerk and Nelson Mandela avoided the expected bloodbath but, since then, the ruling African National Congress has not done well. Because the very qualities which make insurgent groups and liberation movements successful, are not the ones that make effective national governments.
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Frene Noshir Ginwala, best known as the first Speaker of independent South Africa’s democratic parliament, died at age 90, on 12 January, 2023. A contemporary of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, she belonged to a special generation of South Africans who fought hard and long for their country’s freedom.
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In 1993, Nelson Mandela said: “We will have to go on striving to prove that King was right…when he said that humanity can no longer be tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war.” By learning from the tenacity of this striving, rather than by measuring outcomes, we can best honour Mandela