South Africa endures the politics of elite predation

THE ANC is in irreparable decline, with its recent image on stage at its recent January 8th celebration increasingly reminiscent of African dictatorships of the 1980s.

- LORENZO DAVIDS

The DA, on the other hand, is inflicting deep, savage stab wounds on itself, bleeding out before a country looking for hope. For most of the rest of the political firmament, with a few exceptions, we have a bunch of unqualified, desperate jobseekers parading as politicians. Let's be frank: most cannot read a Green or White Paper with the required political understanding.

Political leadership in a world where AI, social polarisation, neo-fascism, the erosion of multilateralism, and heightened global financial risks are all contributing to a redefinition of the geopolitical order requires a particular set of political skills.

Faced with a daily Order Paper of this magnitude, South African politicians are still stuck in micro-factional political battles that seek to advance and protect cadres rather than the Constitution and the causes and institutions that protect our democracy. How have we ended up with this level of incompetence?

In December 2025, American professor David Perlman published a review of John Bellamy Foster's (ed.) book, Albert Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’: The Enduring Relevance of His Classic Essay, on the Marx and Philosophy Society’s Review of Books website. In it, he refers to Einstein's use of Thorstein Veblen’s 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, to describe predatory capitalism.