The Common Sense’s Diary

The MK members who found themselves on the Russia/Ukraine battlefield last month were purportedly there to be trained as bodyguards. Haha. South Africa has some of the best close-protection experts and training on earth, and they could easily have been trained here. They were instead being trained as a paramilitary force in order that one might be deployed in KwaZulu-Natal, if it came to that. That is why the state has taken the whole thing so seriously and shut it down, making several arrests. Hopefully that nips insurrectionist sentiment in the bud.

When KwaZulu-Natal was polled two or three years ago, a majority of its citizens expressed support for secession. Zulu nationalism may have been interrupted by the British Empire, but it is far from dead.

The foot and mouth pandemic sweeping South Africa has arisen because of state failure. South Africa used to be classified as a foot-and-mouth-free zone with no need for vaccination. That status was a huge asset to the country and its rural economy as its beef products were welcomed globally. The collapse of state veterinary services, the inability to secure cordons around high-risk areas, and the proliferation of “informal” cattle changed all that, and over the past five years uncontrolled disease outbreaks saw South Africa lose that status.

As a consequence, the government will now move to vaccinate all the cattle in the country. That is a vast logistical exercise. There are millions of cattle and no official records or database of where they are. There are also multiple strains of the disease, and some are more prominent in certain regions than others. Not all vaccines are equally effective against the different strains. Some leave cattle testing positive without a marker to show that the result arises from vaccination and not from the cow in question actually having the disease. Screw this up and global markets will be closed to South African farmers with dire consequences for the future of the rural economy.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) runs a risk here, given that sorting out the mess has fallen to its leader, John Steenhuisen, who doubles as agriculture minister. His party has had a good run in government and is increasingly breaking through to new voting markets. Part of its brand is governing well and getting things done. There are people in the government who wish to see that change. Screw up the vaccination project and the DA will inherit the mess.

More and more political data is coming out that shows the centrist and pragmatic nature of public opinion in South Africa. The latest is that a majority of ANC and DA voters want their parties to form governments together in any local authority where the one or the other does not achieve an outright majority. The two parties couldn’t really make such a deal before the next vote (likely end 2026 or early 2027), but they should do it after. More than 200 councils are up for grabs and there will be chaos if they don’t.

Someone asked why TheCommon Sense uses so much data in its political reporting.That’s a bit like asking an economist why they use data in their work, or an engineer why they use data in theirs. If you want to understand what is happening inside any system you need data and numbers to understand the trends. Anything less is simply making it up as you go along. Be wary of political writing or analysis that is not heavily laced with numbers.

The Americans really are going to lose South Africa if they carry on as they are. By accusing President Cyril Ramaphosa of presiding over a genocide they've put him in a strong position to deny both that charge, and from there, many other issues, from property rights to South Africa’s appalling foreign policy, that are rightly cited as concerns South Africa should address if it is to be a successful society. By forcing the matter of the genocide and the Afrikaners to a head the Americans are putting the Afrikaners in a position where they will have to make a choice to back the US or South Africa. When that point comes, they’ll countermand the US and pick South Africa, because it is their home, it offers them a good life, and it is where they want to be.

Could the Boks be any better than they were against Wales on Saturday? The score of 73-0 was the perfect end-of-season statement. Eben Etzebeth’s finger in the eye does not detract from what has been another all-conquering tour of Europe. As this column has claimed almost every week of that tour, the Springboks are the best example of what the whole of South Africa could be if it was well run.