In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser

The DA thinks the IEC doesn't have legal power to allow political parties to re-submit lists of candidates who will stand for office in the local elections. 

I initially thought the DA case was decent. I have changed my mind after reading the legal papers of all the parties involved in this dispute.

In this analysis, I explain why I think I was wrong, and why the IEC's legal position is coherent, convincing and unanswerable.

[PLEASE NOTE THE VOTER REGISTRATION WEEKEND IS ON 18 AND 19 SEPTEMBER. NOT 21 SEPTEMBER AS MISTAKENLY SPOKEN IN THIS EPISODE. THE REST OF THE ANALYSIS REMAINS INTACT] 

There is a lot of hatred in South Africa. What does the law say about hate speech? Should all speech be allowed and 'the marketplace of ideas' be burdened with eliminating hate speech? Or should the courts be available for us to seek relief when we are the victims of hate speech? What does the constitution say by the way?

Would it help the fight against crimes motivated by hatred of someone's group identity if we have hate crimes as a special category of crimes on our statute books? Or is there a different way the law can punish crimes motivated by certain kinds of hatred without creating new crime categories?

What, beyond these legal questions, are the limitations of using the law to deal with hatred? Shouldn't we be using social, ethical and other responses and tools to address and eliminate hatred in society?

My guest for this fascinating, complex, and necessary conversation about hatred and the law is Advocate Ben Winks. 

Sit back. Enjoy. Reflect. Engage. And share the episode to spark many conversations. 

Vanita Daniels (director, Rise Up Against Gender Based Violence) joined me to discuss the problem of/with masculinities: a) Are there any "good men" or are allies in the fight for gender-justice also problematic? b) What are differences (if any) between men across class, geography and other markers when it comes to masculinties? How do our toxicities play out depending on various social facts about us? c) Should men get any kind of amnesty for truth-telling or is the idea of trading justice for a possible pathway to safety inherently problematic and a non-starter? d) Is there ANYTHING positive about masculinity? e) Could we imagine a world in which gender is eliminated in our language, and almost entirely de-emphasised in our relations with one another? Have a listen.

Well-known business leader Bonang Mohale (president of Business Unity South Africa) spoke to me about his open letter to president Cyril Ramaphosa on behalf of business leadership. We engaged on the role of business in tackling

urgent South African problems like youth unemployment, general unemployment and low growth. Mohale also gave a searing take on the state of the ANC, the state of the state, and the leadership of Ramamphosa himself. It was a wide-ranging conversation about how we may yet realise our developmental challenges. It is compulsory listening.

The news cycle has been very busy and in this podcast episode I give a view on a number of issues: how should we interpret the constitutional court's court order from Friday about our local elections going ahead? In particular, does the court order allow the IEC to give political parties another chance to submit their candidates lists? 

What are the political implications in the event that the ANC in particular cannot sumbit a complete list? And, while we're discussing the constitutional court, what should we make of Helen Zille's attack on the constitutional court?

Lastly, former president Jacob Zuma has been granted medical parole. What the heck is THAT all about?

I share my current thoughts on various responses to accusations of abuse on the part of author Thando Mgqolozana (author of A Man Who Is Not A Man, Hear Me Alone, Unimportance).

Some of the questions I explore include: Is it important to expres  a public view when a friend is accused of abuse? Or is silence (sometimes) acceptable? Should you wait for the law to "take its course" or can we make judgments outside the legal processes? Can our criminal justice system be regarded as adequate for dealing with violence? Etc. 

Duma Gqubule (well-known policy expert who focuses a lot of his research on economic development) joined me on In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser to make sense of the horror of 44,4% South Africans being unemployed. 

There can be little doubt that the implications for our democracy are dire if we do not get the 11,9 million adults who are capable of working but not working, into jobs, soonest. How did we get here? Were there periods of relative success after 1994 when jobs were created at a decent pace and sustainably so? What was done right during those periods? And when the joblessness numbers started to spiral, what was happening within the economy and political arena that may help explain it all? And, where to from here? Can we reserve our shameful unemployment stats?

Duma helped me to navigate these, and related, questions. In a sense - in a very real sense - these economic questions are almost more important than (and certainly enmeshed with) the wholly and narrowly political questions we have mostly focused on on this podcast series so far.

This podcast episode is therefore an important pivot from 'pure' politics to focusing on economics. And Duma is great at both offering diagnosis of what has gone wrong and why, and also good at offering ideas on how to fix the problems. Have a close listen, and then debate and engage his reasoning. 

In episode 19, I hosted Adriaan Shipalana (CEO, Harambee Technologies) in a conversation that broke the silence around anxiety, panic attacks and other mental health issues. We told our stories of living with these afflictions. (It is well worth revisiting that episode or listening to it for the first time if you had missed it)

In this episode, we are joined by Sibusiso Kotelo (IFBB Pro Bodybuilder and personal trainer) who lives with anxiety and depression. Sibusiso tells his story, and then we shift the focus (from the point of view of ourselves as patients, as persons living with these challenges) to how to build a toolkit to help you live well with these mental health challenges so that they are not debilitating and do not rob you of a full and meaningful life. 

The Economic Freedom Fighters sold itself as THE pro-poor political party, a perfect alternative to a morally bankrupt ANC-led government that is also endemically corrupt. But how desirable is the EFF as an alternative to the ANC and to the Democratic Alliance?

In light of the corruption allegations the party's top leadership, and the party itself, have been facing, I step back from the evidence- discussed in the previous episode, episod  28, of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser with journalist Pauli Van Wyk- and offer a pointed political perspective here, in this very short episode, about how we should now view the EFF.

Is the EFF who they say they are? Have a listen. 

The South African Revenue Service is going after Brian Shivambu for alleged tax evasion, having slapped him with a tax bill of R28.2 million. They also accuse him of defrauding VBS Mutual Bank to the tune of some R16 million. It gets worse for the Shivambu’s- Brian's brother Floyd, Economic Freedom Fighters' second most senior leader and an MP, is allegedly a beneficiary of the loot to the tune of at least R1,6 million and likely much more, as evidenced by bank statements from his FNB Private Wealth bank account. 


In this episode of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser, I examine the case against Floyd Shivambu. I invited investigative journalist Pauli Van Wyk, who has written about and researched this story with a magisterial grip and keen forensic eye, to explain it all.