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Stepping into South Africa’s intellectual debate is a new think tank that aims to unite black people in South Africa and drive their interests after what it views as the failure of the country’s post-1994 democracy.

Vuka Azania was launched at an event in Sandton last week. Founded by Dr Muzi Sikhakhane, former intelligence chief Arthur Fraser, cleric and former politician – and convicted criminal – Dr Allan Boesak, and Dr Isaac Shai, it plans to pursue a “decolonial” agenda, with a focus on issues such as land reform, employment, education, and improving the socio-economic conditions of black communities.

Some of the founders of Vuka Azania will be familiar to the South African public. Dr Boesak was a leading anti-apartheid activist prior to 1994. He stood for office for the African National Congress (ANC) in 1994, and was slated for a high-profile diplomatic posting, but a scandal over the misappropriation of donor funds at an organisation he headed (the Foundation for Peace and Justice) made this untenable. He was ultimately found guilty of fraud and theft and served just over a year in prison.

Arthur Fraser’s name became familiar through the Zondo Commission, which implicated him in malfeasance at the State Security Agency. He is regarded as a close political ally of former President Jacob Zuma. Fraser was later appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa as Correctional Services Commissioner. In this role, he controversially granted Zuma medical parole, allowing him to be released from a prison sentence, a move that overruled the Medical Parole Advisory Board. In 2022, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that this had been unlawful.

In addition, Fraser laid a charge against President Ramaphosa in connection with the robbery of foreign exchange from his Phala Phala farm, kicking off the events that led to the current impeachment process.

In its founding statement, the new think tank condemns the existing political order as a mere continuation of the colonial and apartheid eras.

“Black liberation cannot be reduced to representation inside colonial structures. It requires the dismantling of material, psychological, legal, spiritual, and epistemic systems that continue to reproduce racial domination,” the statement asserts.

The organisation bills itself as a civil society movement and not a political party. It will not contest elections, focusing instead on education, mobilisation, and advocacy for change among black people.

"This is not a political party, but this is something that belongs to South Africans," said Dr Sikhakhane. It aimed to work with civil society bodies like churches and with prominent community leaders to "heal our people".

He went on to say that Vuka Azania intended to convene a “black people’s convention”. This would be a forum to “discuss what we are about, to discuss why we hate each other, to discuss why we want to be slaves, why we do not want anything that seeks to liberate us.”

He added that it would be held without the involvement or participation of those who had created the country’s problems, and continued to retard the progress of black people. This appeared to be an oblique reference to white South Africans.

“To give an example,” he added, “we have gotten used in this country to a situation where we invite racists to help us define what racism is. This attitude has unfortunately led to the downgrading of our historical credence, and the convention will therefore be a space for black people to determine their own destiny and to debate the black condition across communities, because it is the black condition we are talking about, not the invitee to the convention.”

Vuka Azania’s founding statement called for the complete reorganisation of South African society. It regards land and land dispossession as the defining issue in South African history, and places it at the centre of its political and economic agenda. It seeks legal, political, and economic redress for injustices associated with the colonial and apartheid eras, and advocates for black ownership of land and productive assets. It also calls for education reforms that restore African history, languages, and knowledge systems, and supports renaming South Africa to “Azania”.

“African people must own their land, control their wealth, govern their affairs, and restore their historical, cultural, and spiritual dignity,” the statement says.

Vuka Azania joins a number of organisations pushing a race nationalist analysis of South Africa. Its positions echo the programmes of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, and smaller outfits such as the Black First Land First party. Positioning themselves as ideological answers to economic exclusion and enduring poverty, they have drawn criticism for the links that senior officials have had to corruption and state capture. A narrative of resistance to supposed white domination of South African society (“white monopoly capital”) was integral to the media campaign launched during the state capture era to distract public attention from the looting of the state.

The policy programme demanded by these groups – and now by Vuka Azania – risks compounding the very problems it claims to be aiming to solve. Survey evidence shows such policies not to be popular among a largely moderate and pragmatic South African population.

For example, polls on questions from expropriation to the stricter enforcement of race-based business criteria meet with little support from the South African public. In the chart below are responses to a Social Research Foundation poll question from 2025 that asked South Africans whether they support the idea of expropriation without compensation, which is a central policy pillar of most of these race nationalist political parties.