The World Through My Eyes

“I think the people have a sufficient sense of what the Mandela and the others struggled for, and when they look at certain things that are happening, for instance the issue you are mentioning […] quite correctly, it is a matter of corruption…  When they see this corruption in the country, which seems to be increasing, at all levels of government, the people are aggrieved, they are saying ‘but this is not what freedom was for’.” (Mbeki, 2013)  I am once again quoting Former President Thabo Mbeki on a matter related to corruption in the Republic, the usage of this quote in this article is in response to the low levels of voter turnout in the last elections we had in the country or even arguably the decline that we’ve been seeing in voter turnouts as we hold more and more elections.  In its Founding Provisions, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 108 of 1996 (forthwith ‘the Constitution’) declares the Republic as ‘one, sovereign, democratic state’ founded o...

"Sometimes we think that today will forever be today, not remembering that today will be tomorrow and tomorrow will be different" These are the beautiful words of President Thabo Mbeki that I want each of us to carry and remember when faced with gloomy days. I thought it would be befitting that my first piece for the year should look at some of the work of one of Africa's best minds.   This piece intends to serve as an analysis of the Zimbabwean crisis in the early 2000s, the South African government's policy towards the matter under the leadership of President Mbeki, if there were alternatives available and if they should have been explored. I would be doing a huge disservice both to myself and to you if I did not start off by loosely defining what foreign policy is and its importance; so we can look at foreign policy as a set of guidelines that a state (or national government, I'm using the terms interchangeably here) uses to guide its relations and interactions...