How to undo race-resource curse

JANUARY 2016 – 08:02 The writer argues that racism risks undermining the empathy South Africans need to negotiate workable responses to a global economy that demands policies focused on competitiveness. Picture: SUNDAY TIMES Competition and integration must defeat patronage and the scourge of poverty, writes Shawn Hagedorn BIOLOGISTS and political theorists concur: altruism is proportionate…Continue reading How to undo race-resource curse

LETTER: ANC unconstrained by settlement

07 JANUARY 2016 – 07:00 SHAWN Hagedorn’s attempt to explain the current discourse in SA politics on a thesis of “value-based politics” Life of the party and the hangover, January 5) is incorrect and mitigates the real crisis that the current ANC leadership has endowed to its citizens for 2016. Mr Hagedorn’s prescription that the ANC-led…Continue reading LETTER: ANC unconstrained by settlement

Life of the party and the hangover

05 JANUARY 2016 – 08:18 LEO Tolstoy began his novel Anna Karenina with: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” SA’s unhappiness is unique and unsustainable. The country’s cultural identities and historical wounds are being channelled to repackage factional interests as values. This constrains, compromises and undermines co-ordination…Continue reading Life of the party and the hangover

Patronage cannot fire up growth

23 SEPTEMBER 2015 – 07:59 Harsh realities dawn for SA’s political economy that has never served interests of populace and prolonged stagnation is set to entrench desperation, writes Shawn Hagedorn ASTUTE policy making is trumping manufacturing prowess as the base ingredient for raising a nation’s prosperity. Political legitimacy and economic performance have become inseparable. This…Continue reading Patronage cannot fire up growth

Eventually, the patronage machine runs out of fuel

10 DECEMBER 2015 – 13:04 SA’s geographic isolation and its geological abundance promote the rise of debilitating patronage Across the world for millennia, social stability was achieved because peasants accepted their inferior status and because they had a strong sense of duty to their lords and chiefs. Then the political and economic needs of industrialisation…Continue reading Eventually, the patronage machine runs out of fuel