democracy

The Old Fort built seven years after the establishment of Johannesburg is said to be built in the Department of Public Works, Wilhelmine, Z.A.R Architectural style. The Fort was Johannesburg’s main place for incarceration of prisoners for eight decades. Notoriously known as Number Four, the Fort occupied a ‘brooding’ presence in the city, the Fort added a character to the city’s look. It gave it character. Its architectural structure speaking volumes about its use.

In the wake of the Public Protector’s report on Nkandla, opposition parties have been doing all they can to make this an election issue and keep the tale of excess and waste of R250 million fresh in the minds of citizens.

Yet, the jury is out as to whether corruption really was an election issue, and whether citizens had been sufficiently angered by the expenditure on Nkandla to shift their voting preferences.

On 19 March 2014, all Africans had a reason to be proud of the brave and principled leadership that exists on this continent in the form of South African Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela. In a sober and considered manner, she read out the findings of the long-awaited Nkandla report - her investigations into the ‘unconscionable’ amount of R246 million of taxpayers’ money spent on upgrades to President Jacob Zuma’s private residence to no public benefit.

We find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. Last year, Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, found that the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) chairperson, Pansy Tlakula, had presided over an ‘unmanaged conflict of interest’ when the IEC entered into a R320 million lease agreement for office space.

An environmental catastrophe struck Europe thousands of years ago, annihilating one of its most magnificent animals. For millennia, Europe had been the natural habitat for lions, who roamed from Britain to the Urals. Their memory remains in heraldry, folklore and legend. But the lions themselves, beautiful and strong, were obliterated by an invasion of something new and dreadfully destructive. Not a single wild lion remains in Europe. What was this terrible agent of extermination?

The centenary year of the 1913 Natives Land Act is drawing to a close and we are looking ahead to marking two decades of democratic governance in 2014. Many questions arise as to the extent to which the democratisation that seemed imminent in 1994 has been achieved, especially in rural areas in the former homelands.