The Critical Take with Nompumelelo Runji

Interview with Risenga Maluleke (Stats SA): Data and statistics as enablers of good governance

It has become customary for government communications to focus on activities such as the number of job opportunities created, youth entrepreneurs funded and businesses rescued. These are merely outputs. What we really need to worry about is the impact and outcomes of government policies and programmes. To what extent are government's policies and activities achieving strategic goals like lowering unemployment and poverty as well as National Development Plan targets?

Nompumelelo Runji reacts to #SONA 2021 and asks: Does it really matter what President Cyril Ramaphosa said?

The more I listen to #SONA the more I think the speeches are notable for what the president doesn't and can't say rather than what he does. It's a new year, a new set of top priorities and another rattling off of figures. Does it really matter?

Interview with Makhosi Khoza, Former MP: Parliament and the crisis of accountability in SA

Oversight is the most important role of Parliament, holding the executive to account and calling on the president and ministers to answer for their decisions and conduct. There are very clear signs that the oversight function in South Africa is failing.

Interview with Dumisani Hlophe: (Not) Ready to govern: Assessing the ANC's governance performance

Just as the ANC was preparing to contest the 1994 general elections, it released a document titled Ready to Govern. In it outlined the principles, values and policy focus of a prospective ANC government. The party has been in government ever since. After just over 25 years in government, an evaluation of the ANC's governance performance could lead one to question whether the title of the document was more aspirational than it was a reflection of reality.

Interview with Somadoda Fikeni: The nation building project in South Africa

Nation building is both a practical exercise as well as an ideal. It is about defining a unifying identity, collective goals and the common good and interest of a nation. South Africa is a case of a bitterly divided society embarking on the thorny journey of establishing a new sense of nationhood and how pervasive inequality and the betrayal of the good will of the country's majority threatens to reverse the gains already made.