It has been a year since the Madlanga Commission began uncovering allegations of corruption, political interference and malfeasance within South Africa’s criminal justice system.

After 174 days of testimony from 110 witnesses, it has become difficult to keep track of every revelation. Yet the commission has riveted the country in a way few public inquiries have.

So, I called legal journalist Karyn Maughan for a debrief.

Karyn has followed the Madlanga Commission closely, but she also brings the perspective of someone who covered the Zondo and Nugent commissions. She understands what these inquiries can reveal about the state of our institutions and whether they can still be repaired.

Even after everything she has witnessed, Karyn remains hopeful.

She reminded me that while the commission has exposed deeply troubling allegations, the fact that it exists at all tells us something important: South Africa’s commitment to the rule of law has not disappeared completely.

But after hearing evidence about the alleged capture of parts of law enforcement, I had to ask her the uncomfortable question: Are we becoming a mafia state?

You will have to watch the episode to hear her answer.

We also spoke about the personal cost of journalism.

During her career, Karyn has faced relentless online harassment and attempts to intimidate her. Former president Jacob Zuma even pursued a private prosecution against her in a case that was ultimately struck from the roll.

Karyn reflected on why she refused to be silenced. But what enriched our conversation was her willingness to speak honestly about the toll it has taken.

Journalism is difficult on an ordinary day. It becomes much harder when you are treated as the enemy and constantly vilified simply for doing your job.

I often find myself questioning whether journalism is still worth it. Karyn reminded me that we would not continue doing this work if we did not believe, somewhere deep within ourselves, that it is our calling.

She is almost neurotic about every story she covers- in a good way. She treats each one as though it is the most important story of her career.

She brings the same care to an ordinary criminal case that she brings to the corruption trial of a former president.

I am always fascinated by people who have witnessed some of the worst of humanity and still manage to hold on to their faith in people.

But Karyn often reminds me that losing hope is exactly what those who abuse power want us to do.

Watch my full conversation with Karyn Maughan on The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter.

I don’t imagine many people are happy when Devi Sankaree Govender shows up at their door.

She is probably there to expose something, challenge an excuse or ask the uncomfortable questions that others have avoided.

But when she arrived at The Debrief, we were ecstatic.

For many South Africans, it feels as though we grew up watching Devi. She became a household name through her fearless investigative reporting and her years on Carte Blanche.

We know the journalist on television: direct, courageous and unwilling to let people evade accountability.

But I wanted to really pick her brain.

Where did she find the courage to ask Nelson Mandela a tough question? How has she remained disciplined and focused throughout her career? And what has kept her asking difficult questions all these years later?

Our conversation offered a rare glimpse of Devi behind the scenes and taught me a lot about her work ethic and rigour.

What struck me most is that she has never tried to turn herself into someone she is not. Her authenticity is not a television persona. She has remained true to herself while insisting on rigour, accountability and journalism that serves the public.

We spoke about her journey, the values that guide her and what it takes to keep showing up with courage.

If you want to know about how to build an enduring career without losing yourself along the way, this chat is for you.

Watch the latest episode of The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter and let me know what you think. We always appreciate your feedback.

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I went to Sharpeville this past weekend to understand why survivors of the 1960 massacre and the families of those killed are going to court 66 years later.

We know the story of Sharpeville.

On 21 March 1960, police opened fire on people protesting against apartheid’s pass laws. At least 69 people were killed and many more were injured.

Every year, politicians visit Sharpeville. They make speeches, lay wreaths and commemorate Human Rights Day.

But the people I met are still waiting for justice.

Paulina Mathinye was five years old when her father left home to attend the gathering. He never returned.

His death changed the course of her family’s life. Her mother had to raise five children alone. They sometimes went to bed hungry and Paulina could not pursue her dream of becoming a teacher.

Now, Paulina and other families are supporting legal action against the South African government.

At the centre of the case is the Indemnity Act of 1961. The apartheid government used this law to prevent victims and families from pursuing civil or criminal claims linked to the massacre. Lawyers for Human Rights say the law has never been repealed.

The families want the court to declare it unconstitutional and allow a class action to proceed.

But this story is about more than compensation.

It is about acknowledgement. It is about dignity. And it is about why the democratic government allowed these families to wait for more than three decades.

In this episode of Let’s Debrief, we return to Sharpeville, speak to the people who have carried this loss for most of their lives and explain why they are finally going to court.

Watch: This is why Sharpeville victims are going to court in 2026

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We don’t break news. We fix it.

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has lashed out at just about anyone and everyone after it emerged that the ANC failed to complete the submission of all its candidates for the upcoming municipal elections.

The deadline for parties to submit candidates for the 4 November elections was 17:00 on 28 August.

By the time it arrived, 181 ANC candidates had been captured on the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s online system but had not completed the final electronic submission step. Of those, 130 were on proportional representation lists and 51 were ward candidates.

The ANC initially said it had encountered problems with the electronic system and engaged the IEC about processing the names already captured on it. Mbalula now insists the ANC did not blame the IEC itself for the glitch but is asking the IEC to condone the delay.

The IEC’s position is much simpler: the deadline was the deadline. Capturing information on the system was not the same as finally submitting it.

The ANC has now taken the matter to the Electoral Court, arguing that it is not seeking special treatment and pointing out that it was not alone. In total, 2,274 candidates from 45 political parties had information captured on the online system but had not completed the final submission process.

So why does any of this matter?

The IEC introduced an online candidate nomination system after years of relying on a physical paper process. Parties would arrive at IEC offices with reams of paper, and the process was often accompanied by the usual political drama outside.

Managing candidate nominations for a local government election is an enormous administrative exercise. This year, the IEC received 142,072 candidate nominations for just 10,526 council seats.

It is partly why the IEC made its online system available well ahead of the deadline. The system was available from 21 June, even before the formal nomination period began.

From 21 June to 28 August is 68 days.

Even if you ignore that early access and count only the formal nomination period from 7 August, parties still had three weeks to get their lists in order.

At this point it will be important to note that political parties missing candidate deadlines or failing to pay the required deposits is nothing new.

In previous elections, when the IEC published verified candidate lists, smaller and more obscure parties would sometimes arrive outside the commission’s offices to protest after discovering they had missed some requirement.

The difference this time is that we are talking about the ANC- the party that remains the largest in the country.

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Mbalula has come out guns blazing, insisting the ANC had lodged 9,128 candidates across all nine provinces. Of those, 4,366 were registered with the IEC on ward ballots and 4,581 on proportional representation ballots.

“It is ninety-seven per cent of every ward seat in the Republic, and ninety per cent of every proportional seat. No other party in this country will come to you with that figure, and I give it to you first because it is the frame in which everything else must be read,” Mbalula belted.

It is a strange defence.

Nobody disputes that the ANC remains the largest political party in the country. Nor was anyone suggesting that the ANC had somehow failed to register thousands of candidates across South Africa.

The issue is whether a party with the ANC’s experience, resources and institutional knowledge should have found itself in this position at all.

Mbalula went on to explain:

“One hundred and eighty-one of our candidates were received by the Commission’s system on 28 August and did not complete its final electronic step. One hundred and thirty of them on the proportional ballot and fifty-one on the ward ballot. Two in every hundred. They are in six councils out of the two hundred and fifty-seven in this country: Ngquza Hill and Port St Johns, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape; uMshwathi in KwaZulu-Natal; and Mangaung in the Free State.”

Mbalula’s insistence that the problem affects only a small proportion of the ANC’s candidates is aimed as much at his own party as it is at the broader public.

ANC members and leaders in the affected areas are furious.

As secretary-general, Mbalula is ultimately responsible for the organisational machinery of the ANC. Whatever the eventual legal finding about the IEC’s electronic system, the political question for him is how the party got this close to the deadline in the first place.

The ANC’s case is that this was not simply an administrative failure on its part. It argues that the information was already on the IEC’s system before the deadline and that the Electoral Court must determine whether this amounts to submission.

But Mbalula’s own account also reveals how much was happening inside the ANC at the eleventh hour.

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“On 28 August, at the movement’s Data Centre, in the presence of the First Deputy Secretary General, the Chairperson of the Electoral Committee, the Provincial Secretaries and the Chairs of the Provincial List Committees, I as Secretary General approved every list for lodgement. I did so subject to four conditions, and I want the country to hear what they were. That the mayoral candidates chosen by the movement’s national process be on the lists. That any person with a criminal record, or an adverse finding of fraud or unethical conduct, be removed. That any person under the step-aside rule be removed. And that any person having been served with charges facing a current disciplinary matter in the movement be removed.

“That is what has been reported as a ‘reopening’ of the lists. It was not. It was the movement applying its own integrity rules to lists the National Executive Committee had already ratified, in front of witnesses, on the last day. The ANC promised the people that it is serious about renewal. I would give the same instruction again tomorrow,” a defiant Mbalula told the media.

And in that is the problem. Why was so much still happening on the last day?

The ANC has contested every election since the advent of democracy. It knows electoral law. It knows that election timetables are unforgiving. It knows that candidate nomination deadlines are not suggestions.

Its own internal timeline makes the point more starkly. Mbalula says the NEC approved the lists on 25 August and ratified them on 27 August, the day before the deadline.

The ANC also acknowledges there were problems in its own candidate nomination process, including incorrect or unverified identity numbers.

Against that background, reducing the controversy to 181 candidates who did not make it through a final electronic step misses the bigger issue.

The ANC insists it does not want to add new names or receive special treatment. Its case is that the candidate information was already captured and uploaded before the deadline and should therefore be regarded as having been submitted.

That is now a legal question, and ultimately the Electoral Court will decide it.

From my decade and a half of covering electoral matters, I would be surprised if the Electoral Court readily interfered with a deadline. But the ANC’s case does raise a more specific question than simply asking the court for an extension: what legally constitutes “submission” when a party has uploaded its information but has not completed the final electronic step?

Think of it as a university assignment. If you uploaded the document but did not press “submit” before the deadline, did you submit the assignment?

The court will have to answer the electoral version of that question.

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But there is a separate political question that no court judgment can resolve for the ANC.

How did it get here?

Mbalula’s explanation does not adequately account for the chaotic process that preceded the final submission of the lists.

The ANC struggled to settle parts of its candidate selection process despite boldly announcing that its approach, including the selection of mayoral candidates, would help restore confidence among voters.

There were administrative problems along the way. Mbalula himself has acknowledged shortcomings in the verification of candidate information.

He had to explain to the ANC’s top leadership this week what happened and how the party ended up in this mess.

Whether the leadership accepts his explanation is ultimately an internal ANC matter.

What the episode tells voters is more important.

Submitting a candidate list is one of the most routine administrative tasks a political party contesting an election has to perform. It is complicated at the scale of the ANC, certainly, but it is also predictable. The deadline is known. The rules are known. The consequences of getting it wrong are known.

That is why this matters beyond the 181 candidates.

Local government is, at its heart, about administration. It is about making sure the water runs, refuse is collected, roads are maintained, bills are correct and officials do the jobs they are supposed to do.

The ANC is asking voters across the country to trust it to get those much harder things right.

It does not help its case when it cannot get its own paperwork over the line.

The ANC was once known for its formidable election machinery. It could run wall-to-wall campaigns across the country, mobilise thousands of volunteers and collect political intelligence from communities in real time.

Under Mbalula’s leadership, too many of its organisational processes have instead appeared chaotic.

The Electoral Court will decide whether the ANC’s 181 candidates were legally submitted in time.

But whatever the court decides, it cannot fix the more consequential problem exposed by this episode: a party asking South Africans to trust it to run municipalities first has to demonstrate that it can competently run itself.

I have a love-hate relationship with podcasts.

This is probably an awkward admission for someone who now has an interview show.

I have dabbled with podcasts in various iterations over the last decade and I have always understood their power. There is something remarkable about giving two people enough time to properly interrogate an idea, without having to squeeze everything into a 30-second soundbite.

But I have also wondered whether we have reached a point where we simply have too many conversations.

There are hours and hours of people talking to each other every day. Everyone has a microphone. Everyone has an opinion. And, increasingly, everyone seems to have a podcast.

A lot of those conversations go nowhere.

Some have done considerably worse than that. You only have to look at the influence of the manosphere to understand that long-form conversation is not inherently enlightening. Give a bad idea three hours, a good microphone and an algorithm and it can travel very far.

So when we started thinking about The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter, I had to make a case to myself, before I could make one to anyone else.

Why should we talk to each other?

And, more importantly, why should you give me an hour of your week to listen?

The answer, I realised, is actually central to what we are trying to build at The Debrief Network.

Our job is to make sense of the world.

Sometimes we do that by explaining an election, interrogating a politician or unpacking a complicated news story.

But sometimes making sense of the world requires sitting across from someone interesting and asking: How do you think?

That became my value proposition.

I wanted to bring people into the studio who could help me understand something I did not understand before. News makers, friends, change makers, people building things and people challenging the way we think about things.

There is admittedly something selfish about it. I get to pick people’s brains for a living.

And there are few brains I have wanted to pick more than Aliyah Allie’s.

Aliyah is one of those people who seems to spew innovation. Her brain appears permanently occupied by the question of how something could work better.

Today, she leads X, bigly labs, the innovation engine inside Dis-Chem that is working on how one of South Africa’s biggest health retailers can rethink the way people experience healthcare.

It is a big job. It involves technology, data, artificial intelligence, digital platforms and redesigning systems inside a huge legacy business.

But that isn’t actually why I wanted to talk to her.

I met Aliyah when she was still a management consultant at a global firm, long before X, bigly labs became part of her biography.

And somewhere along the way, our stories intersected in a way I didn’t expect.

Her mother sold samosas and koesisters to help raise her family. My mother did the same.

There is something about growing up watching people work like that.

You understand very early that nobody is coming to rescue you.

But you also develop complicated ideas about success.

How hard are you supposed to work?

When does ambition become enough?

How do you walk into rooms that were never designed with you in mind and behave as though you belong there?

And what happens when the life you eventually build becomes much bigger than the one you imagined as a child?

Those are the questions that interest me about Aliyah.

Her career is objectively impressive. Before Dis-Chem, she worked at McKinsey. She studied at UCT and Columbia University. Today, she leads a team trying to rethink parts of South Africa’s healthcare system.

But CVs tell us where people went. They rarely tell us how they got there.

This episode of The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter is really an extension of conversations Aliyah and I have had over the years about success, ambition, work and what it means to navigate a life that becomes bigger and more meaningful than you expected.

Surprisingly, we barely talk politics. Although, as I am constantly reminded, everything is political.

There is something political about two women whose mothers had to hustle to create opportunities for their children sitting in a studio years later and talking about leadership, ambition and building institutions.

There is something worth examining about the distance between where you start and where life eventually takes you.

And there is something powerful about being able to look backwards at that journey without pretending it was inevitable.

Perhaps that is what I want this show to be. Not another place where important people come to tell us how important they are.

I want to understand the things that shaped them. The decisions they made. The things they got wrong. The habits they developed. The ideas they changed their minds about.

I want to know how they think.

Because if you are going to give me an hour of your week, I want you to leave understanding something you didn’t understand when you arrived.

My conversation with Aliyah did that for me.

I think it will do the same for you.

Watch The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter: Aliyah Allie and let us know what you think.

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Watch this week’s episode of Let’s Debrief, on what’s really behind online Islamaphobia in South Africa

Two months ago, it looked like we understood what March and March was about.

The anti-foreigner mobilisation reached a crescendo on June 30, amid an attempt to frame the movement as citizens simply doing what the government had failed to do: ensuring that undocumented foreign nationals left South Africa.

The panic was palpable.

More than 60,000 foreign nationals scrambled to be repatriated. Others made their own plans to leave.

It could have been case closed.

Except it wasn’t.

March and March promised protests every Thursday. The effort to keep the momentum alive continued, and what had been a largely online movement began organising on the ground across the country.

There were fallouts among its leading personalities. Ngizwe Mchunu and Phakela Ndabandaba appeared to differ over the direction of the movement. Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma continued to beat the anti-migrant drum.

But something else was happening that I found much more interesting, and troubling.

The language was changing.

Spend enough time following these conversations online and you begin to notice that the target is no longer simply “foreigners”.

Increasingly, it is Muslims.

Bangladeshi, Somali, Ethiopian and Pakistani shopkeepers are not only described as foreigners doing business in South African communities. Their religion is invoked as part of the threat. Islam itself is presented as something that is “infiltrating” communities.

Then the targets widened.

Gift of the Givers, one of South Africa’s best-known humanitarian organisations, has faced attacks linked to its Muslim identity. Deputy Higher Education Minister Yusuf Cassim has been targeted and the language of Muslim “infiltration” has persisted.

That deserves our attention because South Africa has a long-established Muslim population. Estimates of its size vary considerably, but Muslims have lived here for generations.

That does not mean Muslims have never experienced prejudice. South Africa has no shortage of racism, misogyny, classism and other forms of discrimination.

But what we are seeing now raises a different question: Are legitimate grievances about migration and exploitative business practices being transformed into something broader and more dangerous: sustained hostility towards an entire faith group?

Or are we misdiagnosing what is happening altogether?

That is the debate at the centre of this week’s episode of Let’s Debrief.

Thembisa Fakude, a Black South African Muslim who grew up in a township, challenges the premise. He argues that what we are calling Islamophobia may actually be an expression of frustration from communities that feel exploited by some Muslim business owners.

Moulana Sulaimaan Ravat, a prominent religious leader and broadcaster, sees it differently. He believes much of the anti-Muslim rhetoric appears to be manufactured and amplified online. And, looking at global trends, he argues that South Africans should be careful about dismissing it.

I think that disagreement is important.

Because it forces us to distinguish between three very different things: criticism of immigration policy, anger at the conduct of particular businesses and hostility towards an entire religious community.

Those things can overlap, but they are not the same thing.

And once we stop making that distinction, a grievance about what happens at the shop down the road can very quickly become a story about millions of people who had nothing to do with it.

That is why this conversation matters.

Also, while you’re here, you may want to read a feature I wrote about for Al Jazeera.I travelled with the Salaam Foundation to Nquthu, a rural community in northern KwaZulu-Natal, and found that the anti-Muslim hatred so visible online, was not reflected in the community itself.

Watch this week’s Let’s Debrief and tell me: Are we witnessing the emergence of a new strain of Islamophobia in South Africa, or are we giving the wrong name to a much more complicated problem?

I have a slightly weird obsession with the future of truth and facts.

I keep thinking about what happens when everyone is commenting, but fewer people are doing the difficult work of finding out what actually happened.

That is why meeting someone who shares my passion for clear, trustworthy journalism is always such a delight.

Kgomotso Modise is at the forefront of reporting on some of South Africa’s biggest legal cases. She does something very few journalists are able to do well: take complicated courtroom developments and translate them into explanations that are clear, coherent and easy to follow.

And she does it without losing the substance of the story.

I sat down with Kgomotso on The Debrief because I have enormous respect for her work and the way she has adapted traditional reporting for a new generation of news audiences.

Through her reporting and online news explainers, Kgomotso provides a valuable service to millions of people trying to make sense of the country and the world around them.

We spoke about reporting from inside the courtroom, building trust with an audience and what it means to be a journalist at a time when everyone has an opinion, but facts are increasingly contested.

It was such an honest and energising conversation.

You’ll want to watch this one.

Eighteen months ago, Redi Thlabi gave me a simple piece of advice. I have been living it ever since.

When I left my job as an editor at a massive news organisation, I had no idea what would come next.

I was burnt out after years of covering politics while studying towards, and eventually graduating with, a master’s degree in journalism. I knew I needed a change. I just didn’t know what that change should look like.

So, on a rainy day in Johannesburg, I called Redi Thlabi.

By then, she had relocated to the United States. But long before that phone call, Redi had already been an inspiration to me, as she had been to so many young journalists.

She hosted mid-morning radio at a time when talk radio helped drive the country’s public conversation. I would listen to her interviews with politicians and other power brokers, in awe of the way she could interrogate an issue, connect the dots and articulate what so many of us were thinking but could not yet put into words.

After leaving talk radio, Redi went on to facilitate important conversations, study further and take her work to global stages.

When I called her, I needed help figuring out what to do with my own career.

Her advice was simple: “Do everything.”

And so I did.

I worked in television. I wrote for an international newsroom. I facilitated conversations, delivered keynote addresses, wrote a weekly column and started a digital news organisation.

I do not yet play on the same global stage that Redi does. But what I learnt from watching her, and from that one conversation, was the importance of rigour.

Redi is prepared. She is researched. She is articulate. She understands that having a platform is not enough. You must know what you are talking about, and you must be willing to stand by it.

She has also shown us what it means to remain principled while facing enormous attacks, particularly because of her position on Gaza.

She may not know it, but her bravery empowered me and many others who have faced severe online attacks not to retreat, soften the truth or give up.

Recently, Redi came to Johannesburg for an event where we were both speaking about social media manipulation and the online attacks faced by women in public life.

I invited her to visit us, at Debrief.

Partly, I wanted to show her what I affectionately call our “media spaza shop”. More importantly, I wanted to be reinfected with the audacity that our conversation 18 months earlier had injected into me.

There are very few South Africans who do not know who Redi is. But it is fascinating to hear her tell her own story, in her own words, and explain what continues to drive her.

Today, she speaks on global stages, sits in conversation with people such as Zohran Mamdani and advises international institutions on strategy. Journalism remains at the centre of what she does, but her work has expanded into something much bigger: helping people make sense of power, politics and the world around them.

Our conversation was fascinating, enriching and deeply affirming.

At one point, I tried to play devil’s advocate. I asked why she continued speaking so forcefully about Israel’s genocidal crimes, given the immense personal cost.

Her response was immediate.

“What? Are you joking? No!”

That moment says so much about Redi.

For her, the responsibility to tell the truth is not complicated simply because telling it comes at a cost. If anything, the cost makes the responsibility even clearer.

This episode is about Redi’s extraordinary journey, but it is also about courage, reinvention and the importance of doing work that remains anchored in principle.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. It is one of the most meaningful ways you can help us sustain this podcast and continue producing independent conversations of this kind.

And once you have watched, share your thoughts with us. I would love to know what Redi’s story stirred in you.

I spent part of my weekend doing something so you don’t have to: reading the DA’s entire local government manifesto.

I wanted to find out whether or not the DA is calling for privatisation of local government.

With the local government elections coming on 4 November, the DA is making the case that it can run municipalities better than the ANC. That’s not particularly surprising.

What is more interesting is how it plans to do it.

The manifesto proposes bringing private companies much more deeply into the delivery of water, electricity, waste management, infrastructure and even public safety.

Cue the P-word: privatisation.

The ANC has already jumped on it, accusing the DA of pushing a Thatcherite agenda. The DA says that’s not what it’s proposing at all. Municipalities would remain in control, it argues, while private companies provide services under strict contracts.

And somewhere between those two positions is a genuinely interesting debate.

Because South African municipalities are in trouble.

Many simply don’t have the money to repair ageing infrastructure, never mind build what growing cities need. Some aren’t financially healthy enough to borrow the money either.

So where does the money come from?

Political analyst, Piet Croucamp told me that private capital may eventually become less of an ideological choice and more of a practical necessity.

But politically, this is tricky territory for the DA.

Voters who are fed up with the ANC don’t necessarily want less government. They may just want government that works.

That’s the distinction I’m interested in.

This isn’t really a debate about whether business is good and government is bad, or vice versa.

It’s about what happens when the state is still responsible for delivering your water, electricity and basic services, but increasingly needs someone else to actually do it.

So, does the DA want to privatise local government?

Not quite.

But it definitely wants the private sector much closer to the engine room.

Watch the full episode on YouTube and let us know your thoughts.

There is something about Women’s Month in South Africa that has always left me feeling slightly uncomfortable.

Not because I don’t believe we should celebrate women. Quite the opposite, actually.

The women of 1956, who marched to the Union Buildings against apartheid’s pass laws, deserve every ounce of recognition they receive.

But somewhere along the way, our conversations about women became predictable.

Every August, we seem to recycle the same themes. The same panel discussions. The same questions. The same idea of what a successful woman looks like.

How do you balance it all? Can women have it all? What’s it like being a woman in leadership?

Those conversations matter. But they rarely leave me feeling like I’ve learned anything new.

South Africa is an interesting country.

On paper, we’ve made extraordinary progress. Women occupy some of the highest offices in the land. They lead courts, businesses, government departments and institutions.

Yet something feels different today. Not just in politics, but in culture too.

The influence of women feels quieter and less visible than it once did.

When we started planning the official launch of The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter, I kept asking myself one question.

Who do I actually want to spend an hour talking to?

The obvious answer would have been politicians, CEOs or people who dominate the headlines.

But power and influence doesn’t always look like that.

Some of the most influential people I’ve met are women whose names most South Africans would never recognise.

Women who sit in rooms where decisions are made, who shape policy and who change lives.

These women, who carry enormous responsibility without ever seeking the spotlight.

Then I looked at my own life.

I realised I have been fortunate enough to know many of those women personally.

So the decision became easy.

The first month of The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter will be dedicated to conversations with women who have profoundly shaped my life and, in many ways, continue to shape South Africa.

Not because they are women. But because they have something worth saying.

I don’t want “pink” conversations. I’m not interested in rehearsing the same tired questions about work-life balance.

I want to understand influence. How do these women think? What drives them?

How do they make difficult decisions? How do they see South Africa? What keeps them awake at night?

This week, we begin with Advocate Nokukhanya Jele.

She occupies one of the most important, yet least visible positions in South Africa.

As a legal adviser to President Cyril Ramaphosa, she helps shape decisions on constitutional, legal and international matters. She has sat behind the President at major global forums, including the G20, and played a significant role in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

But that’s not what fascinated me most. What fascinated me was her, her story and the experiences that shaped her.

And, perhaps surprisingly, the achievement she speaks about with the greatest pride isn’t an international legal battle.

It’s her role in helping shape South Africa’s national minimum wage.

That conversation reminded me why I wanted to start this podcast in the first place.

I hope you’ll watch the episode. More importantly, I hope you’ll tell me what you think.

The Debrief with Qaanitah Hunter is exactly what its name suggests.

A chance to sit with influential people, unpack their stories and understand how they see the world.

I hope you’ll join us.

Until next week,

Qaanitah

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IDAC was supposed to be the institution that finally cleaned up State Capture.

Instead, just a few years later, its own leadership would find itself answering questions before a commission of inquiry.

This week's episode of Let's Debrief traces the extraordinary rise and fall of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) and the woman chosen to lead it, Advocate Andrea Johnson.

The story is about whether South Africa can build an anti-corruption institution that remains independent in a criminal justice system long plagued by political interference and factional battles.

Here's how we got here.

Timeline

2018 | Andrea Johnson emerges

Andrea Johnson became one of the country's most respected prosecutors when she was shortlisted for the position of National Director of Public Prosecutions.

Having prosecuted high-profile cases including those involving Jackie Selebi and Oscar Pistorius, she built a reputation for prosecutorial independence. During her interview for the country's top prosecuting job, she repeatedly stressed that prosecutors must act "without fear, favour or prejudice."

Although she was not appointed National Director of Public Prosecutions, her performance cemented her reputation as one of the National Prosecuting Authority's most capable leaders.

The Scorpions years

Long before IDAC existed, Johnson built her reputation inside the Scorpions.

She worked on some of South Africa's most complex organised crime investigations, helped develop investigative systems that are still used today and played a role in tackling organised crime, gang violence, construction extortion, illegal mining and financial crime.

When the Scorpions were disbanded, she continued her career inside the National Prosecuting Authority.

2019 | The Investigating Directorate is born

Following widespread frustration over the slow pace of State Capture prosecutions, President Cyril Ramaphosa established the Investigating Directorate within the National Prosecuting Authority.

The unit was specifically created to investigate complex corruption, serious fraud and State Capture cases emerging from the Zondo Commission.

Many viewed it as South Africa's dedicated State Capture unit.

2022 | Andrea Johnson takes over

After Advocate Hermione Cronje resigned, Andrea Johnson was appointed to lead the Investigating Directorate.

Around the same time, the Zondo Commission recommended that the unit should become a permanent institution with stronger investigative powers.

President Ramaphosa accepted that recommendation and announced plans to establish a permanent anti-corruption directorate.

The vision was ambitious. South Africa would have a specialist, prosecution-led anti-corruption agency with dedicated investigators, forensic experts and long-term institutional capacity.

2024 | IDAC becomes permanent

The Investigating Directorate officially became the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, better known as IDAC.

For the first time, the institution received full police powers, allowing it to conduct criminal investigations with its own investigators, forensic specialists and police officers.

Supporters hailed it as a major milestone in rebuilding South Africa's anti-corruption architecture.

Others questioned whether a body housed within the National Prosecuting Authority could ever be sufficiently independent from political influence.

2025 | The controversy begins

Everything changed when KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi publicly accused IDAC of operating as part of a rogue faction within law enforcement.

The allegations thrust IDAC into the national spotlight.

Attention soon shifted to Andrea Johnson herself.

She defended the directorate's investigations and rejected claims that arrests involving senior Crime Intelligence officials were politically motivated.

She also acknowledged that, in hindsight, she should have recused herself from the interview process that led to her husband's appointment within Crime Intelligence.

Late 2025 | Scrutiny intensifies

As scrutiny around IDAC intensified, Johnson's suitability to lead the National Prosecuting Authority was publicly challenged.

Questions were raised about conflicts of interest, prosecutorial judgment, governance and leadership.

Lieutenant-General Dumisani Khumalo, head of Crime Intelligence for the South African Police Service, was arrested on June 26, 2025, by the National Prosecuting Authority's Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) at OR Tambo International Airport.

The debate was no longer simply about individual investigations and moved on to become a debate about the credibility of South Africa's flagship anti-corruption institution.

2026 | The fall

By 2026, the crisis had deepened dramatically.

IDAC faced allegations ranging from fabricated witness statements and abuse of power to internal factionalism and improper relationships.

Johnson's relationship with embattled Crime Intelligence Major General Feroze Khan is at the centre of everything. 

Amid questions about the motives of prosecutions against Crime Intelligence officials and the national police commissioner Fannie Masemole, Andrea Johnson resigned as head of IDAC. There was talk that she could have faced an enquiry into her fitness to hold office. 

Subsequently senior prosecutors in IDAC were suspended. They may all still face a series of charges including perjury and defeating the ends of justice. 

The Bigger Question

The story of IDAC is ultimately much bigger than Andrea Johnson.

It is a story about institutions.

Can South Africa build an anti-corruption body that is truly independent?

Can public trust be restored once credibility is damaged?

And if the institution created to fight corruption becomes the story itself, where does that leave the country's fight against State Capture?

These are the questions we explore in this week's episode of Let's Debrief.

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The head of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption, Advocate Andrea Johnson, has indicated her intention to resign after it was recommended that she step aside, well-placed sources have confirmed.

It is understood that President Cyril Ramaphosa was considering instituting an inquiry into her fitness to hold office, even before she was scheduled to appear before the Madlanga Commission on Monday.

It was recommended that Johnson be suspended in the interim, given the litany of allegations she and IDAC have faced under her leadership, and to give her an opportunity to clear her name.

Johnson has since indicated a willingness to resign on 1 August, subject to a three-month notice period, according to well-placed sources.

However, it is understood that her proposed resignation was not immediately accepted.

She was subsequently hospitalised ahead of her scheduled appearance before the Madlanga Commission on Monday.

The president has not formally received or accepted her resignation.

Ramaphosa’s spokesman Vincent Magwenya says he can’t comment on the matter.

Under Johnson’s leadership, IDAC has come under fire over its arrests of Crime Intelligence officials, as well as accusations that the directorate undermined police investigations.

There are also concerns about whether certain prosecutions were selective, while alarm bells have been raised over the unit’s dealings with Crime Intelligence.

Further allegations include possible interference in sensitive police cases and concerns about relationships between senior IDAC officials and Crime Intelligence personnel.

Johnson’s husband, Junaid Johnson, works in Crime Intelligence at the rank of brigadier.

During parliamentary testimony, Johnson acknowledged that she had participated in an interview and selection process involving him during the Scorpions era.

She said that, in hindsight, she should have fully recused herself.

The Madlanga Commission has also heard allegations concerning Johnson’s role in an assault investigation involving suspended Crime Intelligence Major-General Feroz Khan.

A retired Hawks investigator reportedly testified that he had been told Johnson instructed investigators not to pursue certain aspects of the case.

Another witness alleged that Johnson contacted, or sought information from, a person connected to the complaint.

There are few South Africans who have successfully crossed the worlds of academia, politics, media and digital storytelling quite like Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh.

This week on The Debrief Podcast, I sat down with the political commentator, author, podcaster and Oxford-trained academic for a wide-ranging conversation about influence, journalism, power and the future of media in South Africa.

We spoke about what it means to build one of South Africa’s most influential current affairs platforms from scratch, why traditional media often misunderstands digital audiences, and how creators can succeed in a world increasingly shaped by algorithms.

The conversation also ventured into more personal territory.

Sizwe reflected on growing up as the son of advocate Dali Mpofu, the burden of public perceptions, and whether he considers himself a political “nepo baby.”

We debated the role of journalists versus commentators, the tension between accountability interviews and long-form podcast conversations, and whether audiences can be trusted to draw their own conclusions.

And, in true Debrief fashion, we ended with a rapid-fire round that produced some fascinating answers — including which political figures he believes are overrated and underrated, why democracy still retains legitimacy among young people, and why South Africans continue to reward charisma over competence.

If you’re interested in the future of journalism, the creator economy, South African politics, or simply how influence is changing in the digital age, this is an episode worth your time.

Listen now and let us know what you think. Also, don’t forget to share.

What began as a reported theft of foreign currency from Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm in 2020 has since evolved into one of the most consequential political controversies in South Africa’s democratic history.

The saga spans a quiet burglary, an unofficial investigation, questions about the source of foreign cash, and a protracted political and legal battle. It has now culminated in a Constitutional Court ruling that has revived the prospect of impeachment.

We know that the details have been hard to track. So we’ve mapped it out, step by step, to make sense of how this story unfolded, and why it still matters.

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25 December 2019

Sudanese businessman Hazim Mustafa allegedly visits the farm and pays US$580,000 cash for 20 buffaloes, according to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s version.

30 December 2019

Lodge manager Sylvester Ndlovu goes on leave and hides the money inside a sofa in the President’s private residence.

9 February 2020

A housebreaking occurs at Phala Phala. An undisclosed amount of foreign currency stolen from the sofa.

10 February 2020

General Manager Hendrik von Wielligh reports a “security breach” to Ramaphosa, who is in Addis Ababa for an African Union summit. Ramaphosa instructs General Rhoode to investigate.

February/March 2020

Head of Presidential Protection General Whally Rhoode’s team conducts an unofficial investigation at the farm, interrogating workers and suspects. No case opened, no docket registered.

March 2020

Rhoode’s team travels to Cape Town following a tip-off that suspects were there. They visit the Barons car dealership in Culemborg.

19 June 2020

South African police authorities meet Namibian police at “no man’s land” at the Ariamsvlei border post to share information about the suspects. They request the matter be handled “with discretion.”

25 June 2020

General Rhoode accompanies Presidential advisor Bejani Chauke to Namibia. Chauke meets Namibian President Geingob in Windhoek.

1 June 2022

Former intelligence boss Arthur Fraser goes public, laying criminal charges against Ramaphosa and others. The scandal breaks nationally.

15 June 2022

Fraser meets with Hawks investigators and provides a detailed second statement.

23 June 2022

Fraser submits a formal statement to the DPCI with further details about the alleged money laundering.

June 2022

The ATM submitted a motion to the Speaker of the National Assembly (Speaker) in terms of section 89 of the Constitution and rules 129A to 129Q of the Rules of the National Assembly (NA Rules), requesting the National Assembly to initiate an inquiry into the removal of the President from office for his conduct in the Phala Phala controversy.

30 August 2022

SARB Governor Lesetja Kganyago writes to EFF’s Floyd Shivambu confirming the Reserve Bank’s Financial Surveillance Department is investigating the origin of the foreign currency.

14 September 2022

Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula appoints the Section 89 Independent Panel, chaired by retired Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, with retired judge Thokozile Masipa and advocate Mahlape Sello.

29 September 2022

Ramaphosa answers questions in the National Assembly about Phala Phala, saying he reported the theft to General Rhoode “as a police official.”

19 October 2022

Speaker formally refers the motion to the panel, starting the 30-day clock.

27 October 2022

Deadline for submissions to Parliament. ATM, EFF and UDM all submit on time.

6 November 2022

Ramaphosa submits his response to the panel on time. He denies wrong doing.

14 November 2022

Panel requests a 13-day extension from the Speaker, citing the complexity of the process.

30 November 2022

Panel submits its report, finding prima facie evidence that Ramaphosa has a case to answer on all four charges.

13 December 2022

A Parliamentary vote saw the ANC use its majority to block the panel report from being adopted and the inquiry to proceed.

2023

EFF challenges the decision at the Constitutional Court.

8 May 2026

The Constitutional Court ruled that the vote was invalid and unconstitutional and the president should face impeachment proceedings.

11 May 2026

National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza says an impeachment committee against the president will be set up following the Constitutional Court judgment

Political parties call for Ramaphosa’s resignation

11 May 2026

Ramaphosa says he will not resign and will challenge the panel report on judicial review at the High Court.

12 May 2026

Parties call for the impeachment process to begin while Ramaphosa finalises his application. It is unclear whether he will interdict the report and ask for the impeachment process to be delayed until his judicial review is finalised.

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It is always such a treat sitting down with Dr Naledi Pandor. And no matter how many times I do, I always leave with something rich.

There are politicians who answer questions like they are reading the terms and conditions on a banking app. Then there is Naledi Pandor, who answers like your smartest auntie has arrived, sat down properly, and is now going to explain the world to you.

And frankly, we need more of that.

This is the long and short of it: Democracy is not a side quest

I started by putting to her something many young South Africans say privately and online: democracy does not mean much if life is hard.

Pandor was having none of it. For her, freedom and democracy are inseparable. Democracy is not just voting every five years. It is people choosing who governs them and shaping the society they live in.

Then came the killer line. If democracy does not matter, what exactly are we choosing instead?

Autocracy? Dictatorship?

“I refuse to do that,” she said.

I asked her about studies showing some young people would accept a dictator if their basic needs were met.

She did not blame the youth. She blamed us.

She said it would be a failure of adults if young people do not understand how societies are built and why democracy matters.

Honestly, it was painful but fair.

Because if all young people see is unemployment, corruption and potholes, then democracy can start to look like a scam with branding.

That is not only a youth problem. It is a leadership problem.

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We then moved to global politics, where everything currently feels like a group project designed by chaos.

Pandor said the current moment is frightening precisely because humanity should know better by now.

We have technology. We have knowledge. We have history books. And yet here we are.

Her diagnosis was sharp. She says some leaders mistake power for wisdom and they think having power means doing whatever they like. But eventually, that destroys the very thing they claim to protect.

So how should young people understand Mandela?

Pandor said young people cannot fully understand Nelson Mandela unless they understand apartheid.

Without that context, Mandela becomes a motivational poster. A superhero. A man with vibes.

But when you understand the brutality of apartheid and the sacrifice required to resist it, then you understand Mandela the human being, not just Mandela the brand.

So what gives her hope? Young people.

What keeps her up at night? Leaders who can press nuclear buttons.

Same, ma’am. Same.

There was something refreshing about hearing a public figure speak with seriousness, clarity and conviction, without sounding robotic or rehearsed.

Pandor reminded me that politics can still be thoughtful. That leadership can still have substance. And that sometimes the smartest person in the room is also the calmest.

Watch the full interview and our must-watch game of world leader Tinder. You will never believe how she swiped!

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Cosmetic procedures are more visible than ever leading to a darker side where people are going to extreme lengths to meet impossible beauty standards. For some, that means turning to backdoor or unlicensed operators who promise cheap, fast transformations but deliver dangerous, often irreversible outcomes. The pursuit of beauty is no longer just about enhancement; in many cases, it has become a risk people are willing to take with their own bodies.

In a recent News24 report, unqualified cosmetic practitioners were linked to botched procedures, infections, disfigurement, and even death, underscoring how unsafe these underground operations can be.  That is the reality behind the glossy images and social media trends. When medical procedures are treated like casual beauty services, the consequences can be devastating.

To understand the other side of the industry, we went to a higher end aesthetic clinic located in Rosebank Johannesburg, and spoke to Dr Bhabha, where the world of beauty looked very different. Instead of shortcuts, there was consultation, skin analysis, personalised treatment planning, and a clear emphasis on technique and safety.  What we saw there was the polished, professional side of aesthetics, which caters to people who can afford expert care, proper equipment, and a more measured approach to enhancement.

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In conversation with Dr Bhabha, we got to better understand the world of aesthetic medicine and the pressure social media places on people to chase unrealistic results. Filtered images, polished before and afters, and endless beauty content have changed how people see themselves, often blurring the line between what is achievable and what is simply curated for the feed. The result is a growing disconnect between expectation and reality, where aesthetic treatments are judged by their final look alone, without enough understanding of the skill, care, and medical judgement behind them.

So while the opinions around cosmetic treatments will forever be split, one thing is clear: the pressure to conform is only growing. On one end of the spectrum, people are risking their health in unsafe, unregulated spaces; on the other, legitimate clinics are turning beauty into a highly skilled, expensive, and carefully managed service. In the end, both worlds reveal the same truth. Whether above board or underground, the aesthetics industry is being fuelled by demand, insecurity, and the promise of transformation.

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I’ve been following Sudan for a long time.

It sits close to my heart in a way that’s hard to explain to people who haven’t been paying attention, and I know most people haven’t. Which is part of what makes this so hard to sit with.

This month marks three years since the war began. Three years. And somehow, we are now entering the fourth.

I keep repeating that to myself because it doesn’t feel real when I say it out loud. I just finished an interview that I genuinely don’t know how to come down from.

There’s a kind of restlessness in my chest, like something hasn’t settled properly. And like always, when I don’t know where to put my feelings, I write it out. So, bear with me.

I spoke with Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, a man who has spent 26 years investigating war crimes.

I went into our conversation thinking I was going to learn about how war crimes are verified in Sudan. And I did.

But what I walked away with was something I didn’t expect, the image of a 45-year-old war crimes investigator, one of the most experienced in the world, standing in front of the UN Security Council in July 2023 and begging.

I felt something drop in my stomach when he said that. I’ve interviewed a lot of people, and I can’t remember the last time a single word made me feel that unsettled.

He told me:

“I’m angry all the time since July 2023. That’s when we privately briefed the UN Security Council for the first time of seven as it relates to El Fasher. I had never before in my life begged. And I begged the UN Security Council to send troops to El Fasher to try to protect the people who were there because we knew what the Rapid Support Forces were going to do.”

Seven briefings. He said seven. And I just kept thinking about what it must feel like to walk into that room, lay the evidence on the table, and watch nothing happen. Then do it again. Then again. Then again.

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Here is what three years of war in Sudan actually looks like, if you’re willing to sit with it.

YEAR ONE: 2023

The war erupted on April 15, 2023 after two generals who had jointly staged a coup, and who had ruled Sudan’s transitional government together, and were supposed to be shepherding the country toward democracy, turned their weapons on each other instead. What followed almost immediately, was a war on civilians. It has now been described by the United Nations as the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet. Not one of the worst. The worst.

And most people have abandoned it.

Three months into the war, Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab had already gathered enough evidence to warn the US Government, the United Nations, and the Security Council directly. They said a genocidal massacre would happen if El Fasher fell to the RSF.

Think about that for a moment. Three months in and the warning was already on the table.

Raymond and his team were doing something that sounds almost impossible, piecing together ground-level truth from satellites orbiting 450 miles above the earth. In Sudan, where journalists can’t safely operate and aid workers can’t safely reach entire regions, that is often one of the few ways to prove what’s happening at all. So, they measured. They tracked. They cross-checked everything. And they went to New York and they begged.

The UN Security Council didn’t act.

YEAR TWO: 2024

By 2024, everything they had warned about was already unfolding. The RSF had begun their siege of El Fasher, the last major government stronghold in Darfur, still outside their control, home to hundreds of thousands of civilians and internally displaced people who had already survived the Darfur genocide of the 2000s. Satellite images showed something happening simultaneously in the farmland surrounding it. The RSF began systematically burning the farming communities surrounding the city. This is the part of the conversation where I felt physically uncomfortable. I remember shifting in my seat, like my body was trying to create distance from what I was hearing.

Between March and June 2024, at least 41 farming villages around El Fasher were destroyed through arson. One village was burned seven times. These weren’t random acts of destruction but communities that grew the food that fed the entire city. They were predominantly Zaghawa communities, the same ethnic group the RSF was targeting inside El Fasher itself.

This is the part that made my stomach turn during the interview. Because what YHRL proved scientifically, forensically, from space is that the RSF were engineering starvation. Deliberately. Methodically. And they could prove it. I asked Raymond how do you prove genocidal intent, especially through satellite imagery. Essentially what they’re describing here is a forensic investigation, except the crime scene is hundreds of miles below.

Raymond explained it like this:

“We are measuring the length of objects. We are measuring colour. We are measuring the way objects behave in reference to each other and the way objects change over time as it relates specifically to our work on proving intentional starvation. The fire events go up over 500% versus previous years and they are all localized to communities that are ethnically in the target set for the Rapid Support Forces. What this report ends up doing is being able to prove intent without the statements of the perpetrator being required. They intended to specifically burn these communities in these ways and in each case, they have a specific repeating effect on food security for the population in El Fasher, Abu Shouk, El Salam and Zamzam camps.”

Fire events all producing the same outcome, with farmers displaced, fields dying, and a city slowly being starved from the outside in. They had the forensic methodology to stand up in an international court and demonstrate, without a confession, that this was genocide by design. The data showed a map of intent and that map was presented to the people with the power to act. They didn’t. Even writing this now, I feel that same tightness in my chest. Because it’s one thing to hear and see violence. It’s another to understand that it’s being calculated in that way, with that level of intent.

YEAR THREE: 2025

I’ll be honest, this is the section I had to stop writing halfway through and come back to. In April 2025, the RSF attacked Zamzam Camp, one of the largest internally displaced persons camps on earth, killing civilians, burning homes, and driving over 400,000 people out into the desert.

People who had already been displaced once, twice, some of them three times over. In October, the RSF had built a literal earthen wall around El Fasher, sealing the city shut. It fell on October 26th, 2025, after 500 days under siege. In the days that followed, satellite imagery identified over 150 clusters of objects consistent with human bodies on the ground. Raymond told me that the grass was growing through the market stalls. The stalls were falling over. And a city was emptied.

I don’t know why that detail has stayed with me more than anything else, but it has. Maybe because it makes the absence feel real. A city doesn’t just disappear, but in that moment, it kind of did. By late 2025, Sudan had effectively split in two. The RSF controlled large parts of Darfur, while the national army held the east and the capital regions.

The country that was once home to one of Africa’s most hopeful democratic uprisings had become a fractured, bleeding thing that the world had largely stopped looking at. In 2025, satellite images of El Fasher showed blood from space. Red discolouration on the ground, visible from orbit. It was the images that finally made the world wake up to Sudan. YHRL documented it, published it and for a moment the world briefly sat up and paid attention. And then moved on.

Raymond told me what he believes happened there:

“We watched the city get murdered preventably from space, in an event that probably killed as many people as the nuclear detonation in Nagasaki. It was one of the single largest mass casualty events in human history since World War 2. It was the most accurately predicted, the most precisely in detailed warning, over two and a half years before completion of the massacre, where we had exquisite intelligence about what they were trying to do and what they were going to do. Information had never been the problem. The problem was political will. The West’s relationship with the United Arab Emirates mattered more than the lives of the people in El Fasher. They didn’t matter enough. And so, they died.”

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Nagasaki. The word made me go completely still. I remember just sitting there, not even writing anything down for a moment, just letting that word hang in the air. I’m still sitting with it now, if I’m being honest. I don’t think I’ve fully processed it. There was something else that he said that I sat with for a long time after the interview ended. The one I keep coming back to.

“The West’s relationship with the UAE mattered more than the lives of the people in El Fasher.”

This is not a conspiracy theory, or an activist’s rhetoric. It is a forensic conclusion, from a 26-year veteran of war crimes investigation, who watched it happen from space and is still angry about it three years later. As he should be. As we all should be.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Today, Sudan enters its fourth year of war. Right now, 34 million Sudanese people need humanitarian support.

That’s nearly two thirds of the entire country. 14 million people have been displaced, a quarter of the entire country’s population. 21 million face acute food insecurity. Some estimates put the death toll at 400,000. The numbers are so large they almost stop feeling real, and I hate that, because they are real.

And what scares me is that the same pattern is starting again that preceded the fall of El Fasher and is emerging in El Obeid, a city in Kordofan currently under RSF siege. Amnesty International has warned that the window to prevent a repeat of El Fasher is fast closing. We have seen this before. We know how it ends.

THE THING I KEEP THINKING ABOUT

Raymond has spent 26 years investigating war crimes. He filed almost 70 reports on El Fasher alone. He briefed the Security Council seven times.

And El Fasher fell exactly the way he said it would. He is angry. And there’s something about that anger that feels justified in a way I don’t think I can fully put into words.

The evidence was visible from space. Three years into this war, going into a fourth, the evidence hasn’t changed. Only the scale has. I don’t really have a neat way to end this. I don’t think there is one. I just know I couldn’t sit with all of this and not write it down.

Until next time.

Z

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It’s been a while since I last chatted to Rise Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi who is pretty busy these days as chair of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

And frankly, a lot has changed since the 2024 general elections.

He says South African politics is shifting from substance to spectacle.

Zibi argues that politics in 2026 is increasingly driven by engagement, virality and “vibes” rather than bread-and-butter issues, as citizens become overwhelmed by misinformation, digital noise and political fatigue.

He is not wrong.

In that environment, many voters are checking out altogether, even as the consequences of politics grow more severe.

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In our chat, Zibi reflects on his own journey from outsider to elected politician, saying distrust in politicians now extends even to him simply because he joined the system.

But he insists meaningful political change requires exactly that: entering institutions, building credibility and doing the hard, often unglamorous work of reform.

He says one of the biggest lessons from launching Rise Mzansi was that South Africans still look for a track record, even when they claim to want “anti-politicians.” I found that fascinating.

A major theme in the interview is Zibi’s belief that South Africa’s political class has been hollowed out by the withdrawal of professionals from politics.

He reminded me that when the ANC was formed in 1912, it was a bunch of clever elites.

Zibi argues that too many skilled South Africans prefer to remain adjacent to power rather than pursue it directly, leaving leadership spaces vulnerable to weaker candidates, especially in local government.

For him, rebuilding politics is a long game that starts with serious people choosing to participate.

That philosophy shapes how he approaches Parliament.

As chair of Scopa, Zibi says he has deliberately pushed the committee away from political theatre and toward technocratic accountability.

Rather than chase headlines, the focus is on systemic reform: improving governance at state entities, setting standards for public appointments and using oversight to solve real problems. Unsexy politics, really.

He points to issues like the Road Accident Fund’s massive backlog — more than 453,000 claims affecting over 4 million people — as proof that detailed parliamentary work can have life-changing consequences.

We debated whether people care and he insists that people stop him at the grocery story about it.

On coalition politics, Zibi argues that South Africa’s problem is not simply too many parties, but the poor quality of leadership and the lack of unifying figures, especially in municipalities.

He is blunt about the dysfunction in local government, warning that without capable candidates and collaborative leadership, instability will deepen.

He is equally frank about President Cyril Ramaphosa, describing him as cautious rather than malicious: sometimes taking the right decisions, but often too slowly.

But then I pushed if that caution was malicious on Ramaphosa’s side. Zibi shook his head.

More broadly, Zibi believes the ANC is no longer the only credible vessel for progressive politics and that South Africa’s political “soul” remains centre-left, creating space for a social democratic alternative.

Despite his grim assessment, Zibi is not without hope.

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What keeps him going, he says, are the small victories in Parliament and the many overlooked public servants who continue to hold the country together.

His final answer to why South Africans should still believe in the country is simple, emotional and telling: because, despite everything, it is beautiful.

You don’t want to not watch the full episode.

Give it a watch and let me know your thoughts.

Best,

Q

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In South Africa’s comedy scene, the laughs often mask a far more complicated reality. As the industry evolves, making a living from comedy is becoming increasingly difficult, with many performers forced to rethink what a sustainable career actually looks like.

The comedy economy is under pressure. While stand-up has long relied on live audiences and club circuits, limited venues, small budgets, and inconsistent turnout mean that income from gigs alone is rarely enough. Many comedians are now turning to alternative revenue streams like corporate bookings, brand work, and digital content to stay afloat.

At the same time, the rise of social media has fundamentally changed the landscape. Online platforms have lowered the barrier to entry, allowing new voices to gain visibility quickly, but they have also intensified competition. Attention has become a valuable currency, and comedians are now expected to perform not just on stage, but across multiple platforms.

We began at the V&A Waterfront, where we spoke to comedian Yaaseen Barnes about navigating this shifting industry. From building a career over more than a decade to adapting to the demands of digital platforms, his experience reflects how comedians are being pushed to evolve beyond traditional stand-up and think of themselves as brands.

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Then we headed off to a live comedy night at Clarke’s Bar to see how this plays out on the ground. These spaces are often self-funded, community-driven, and operate on tight margins, with organisers reinvesting earnings just to keep shows running. For many comedians, these stages are less about income and more about exposure, practice, and staying relevant.

Through conversations with comedians and organisers, a clear picture emerges of an industry in transition. One where passion drives the work, but financial stability remains uncertain.

As the business of comedy continues to shift, the question becomes not just who gets to be funny, but who can actually afford to make a career out of it.

What do you think the future of comedy in South Africa looks like?

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There’s a chilling phrase that has stayed with me. Someone had sent a message to a political activist from Zimbabwe,” You have to go to the police, or you will come to the police with flowers on your chest.” This is the stark reality of those speaking out against the Zimbabwean government.

For months, I’d been watching reports come out of Zimbabwe, arrests, intimidation, the quiet suffocation of dissent. Then public hearings on the constitutional amendments turned violent. People who showed up to speak against the bill were beaten. Students were arrested. And the hearings kept going anyway, the government apparently unbothered by the optics. So I went looking for someone living through it. After searching, I found Youngerson Matete, who’s been moving between safe locations, in hiding, and fearing for his life. He shared his story with me, of how he landed up in exile after fearing death and violence in Zimbabwe. He’d been sleeping under bridges on bad nights, and trying to escape the shadow of the state security agents. All because he stood up against a proposed constitutional change in Zimbabwe that critics say could keep President Emmerson Mnangagwa in power till 2030 and beyond.

The man in hiding

He’s been a political activist for over ten years, promoting democracy, mobilising communities, doing the slow unglamorous work of civic life. He has been training and organising young people to attend the public hearings on the constitutional amendments, to show up and make their voices heard. That work made him a target. The government accused him and his network of inciting violence and of training young people outside the country to destabilise Zimbabwe by force. He told me that it is all a fabrication. But fabricated or not, the consequences were real. I asked him to walk me through his journey of how he ended up in exile.

“It’s because from the beginning of March to where we are now, I’ve seen increased threats around me using my family, my brothers, being tortured by people who claim that they are from the president’s office, looking for me. I really do not have a sense of freedom because the ghosts of the state security agents who have been harassing me for the last three weeks, still follows me. Sometimes I still have nightmares when I’m sleeping. I hardly step out of the door. I can’t go anywhere because I don’t know if I’ll be safe. The government has got a network of state security agents around the region, which they follow people, abduct them, kill them or do whatever that they want to do.” - Youngerson Matete

State security agents visited his family. They showed up at every place he tried to sleep. He ran out of money. The border crossing to safety was its own ordeal. This was actually his second time fleeing, he’d briefly left in October last year during street protests, then gone back. Going back cost him. And even after making it out this time, the fear still stays with him. I asked him what it costs, emotionally, mentally, to keep speaking out knowing the risks. His answer was careful and heavy. He talked about the psychological toll of constant surveillance, the way it strips away ordinary life. He mentioned comrades who have developed PTSD, some who broke down entirely. Female activists sexually assaulted and left without any rehabilitation support, carrying the damage alone. He said he’s currently attending counselling himself, trying to stay functional.

“It’s something you really don’t wish on someone else,” he told me. “But it’s where we are.”

His matter of factness took me aback. I could see he was shouldering a great burden, but still insisting on fighting for his country, despite the immense risk that has followed him.

The constitutional coup?

Matete’s story is set against the political backdrop of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, now 83, who came to power through a military coup in 2017, orchestrated largely by his then-ally and current vice-president, Constantino Chiwenga. He was re-elected in 2018 and again in 2023. His current term was supposed to end in 2028. The proposed amendments, which critics have dubbed “Agenda 2030,” would push that to 2030. The proposed changes go further than just extending Mnangagwa’s term. They also include scrapping direct presidential elections altogether, replacing the public vote with a parliamentary one, where ruling party MPs would effectively choose the next president. Given Zanu-PF’s long-established grip on parliament, this would move Zimbabwe closer to a system where power circulates almost entirely within the party. Other proposals would expand the senate, redraw constituency boundaries, and return the electoral commission to an official widely seen as partisan. Critics say each of these changes, taken together, is about locking in one-party dominance for the long term. In a bold statement, Matete called this a constitutional coup.

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“So what you are seeing now is an unconstitutional attempt to violate the constitution. Some are calling it a constitutional coup, just an extension of the 2017 coup that we saw in Zimbabwe. What they’re trying to do is just creating a precedence of amending the constitution further and civilian future. We are not going to have elections in 50 years, we are not going to have elections in a 100 years. We are now in a dynasty. Cecause once you open that gate, you can’t close it.”

Matete told me that under Zimbabwe’s constitution, changing presidential term limits requires a referendum. And if the sitting president would personally benefit from that change, a second referendum is required, one that cannot happen less than six months after the first. Those rules exist specifically to prevent what critics say is now happening. On paper, Zimbabwe has a 90-day consultation process. In reality, the government compressed in-person public hearings into just four days across roughly 60+ locations, often giving people only a few hours to speak. I asked Matete what he thought the constitutional hearings means for the legal process being used as a way to further authoritarianism in Zimbabwe. His answer stopped me in my tracks.

“Yeah so what the government has done is that they’ve abandoned pretences of democracy and rule of law. They are forcing people through the chaotic and shambolic public hearings that are being organised by parliament, where those opposed to the Bill are not allowed to speak, they’re physically being beaten up, being hunted. We are seeing young people, students being arrested who are opposed to that and actually have some students are currently behind bars. It’s like a worker who extends his own contract before consulting the employer and then comes back and says, ‘I’ve awarded myself this extension, is it okay?’ And you’re not allowed to say it’s not okay. You’re beaten up.” - Youngerson Matete

The hearings were packed with bussed-in ruling party supporters. Zanu-PF structures controlled the microphones, handing them only to those they approved of. People who came to oppose the bill were sidelined, ignored, or worse. By the second day, the main coalition of civil society groups defending the constitution had walked out, declaring the process a charade. This followed a pattern going back months, when in October 2025, a civil society meeting to discuss the amendments was firebombed.

Takunda’s story

In a tragic tale, Matete told me about a student leader named Takunda, affiliated with the Zimbabwe National Students Union. Takunda attended one of the public consultations in Harare. He hadn’t even spoken yet, he’d just arrived to observe, when he was grabbed by what Matete described as state security agents or their proxies and assaulted him. He is currently in custody. His crime, as Matete put it, was simply showing up.

As Matete described it plainly: the government has abandoned the pretence of democracy. And he has a pointed way of framing what’s at stake, not just for Zimbabwe, but for the region. Millions of Zimbabweans already live in South Africa, driven out by poverty and political instability. If the constitutional order collapses further, that pressure only grows, and the consequences spill across borders. What neighbouring countries forget is that Zimbabweans are just trying to make a living and survive. But Matete told me that he still fights for a Zimbabwe that will welcome its people from South Africa and the diaspora back home.

The power struggle within Zanu-PF

What’s less visible from the outside is that these amendments aren’t just about Mnangagwa vs. the opposition, they’re also about Mnangagwa vs. Chiwenga. The two men have a complicated history. It was Chiwenga, as military chief, who made the 2017 coup possible. The informal understanding at the time was that Mnangagwa would go first, and Chiwenga would follow. Extending the term to 2030 effectively kills that arrangement, blocking Chiwenga’s path and consolidating Mnangagwa’s hold and his family’s influence, before any transition can happen. Zanu-PF’s factional tensions, never far below the surface, are being pulled tighter.

Beyond these internal divisions, what we’re seeing in Zimbabwe is part of a wider trend recently, where leaders who came to power through military or dominant-party systems using legal changes to extend and consolidate power. Across the continent and beyond, leaders have used legal mechanisms, constitutional amendments, court appointments, referendum manipulation, to entrench themselves. What makes Zimbabwe’s situation particularly grim is the duration. From the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s to the violent suppression of protests in 2019, speaking out in Zimbabwe has always carried a cost. The current moment is not a departure. It’s a continuation.

“Since 1980, speaking out against the government, you will get killed, arrested, disappeared. We have comrades we don’t know where they are, 10 years, 15 years, since 2000. Some since 1980. What it has done is it is put a climate of fear among the ordinary people in Zimbabwe “ - Youngerson Matete

What I keep thinking about

Matete said something near the end of our conversation that I’ve been turning over ever since: “What Mr Mnangagwa is failing to understand is that Zimbabwe cannot be placed in his pocket. It is a country that was fought for by many people and many people still believe in it, despite that many things are not working and we would want to make sure that our country works. It’s an existential threat that we are facing, so we are fighting for our lives.”

He said it almost matter-of-factly. He’s been threatened, chased out of his own country, separated from everything he loves and he still believes Zimbabwe belongs to its people. That it can be saved. That young people can save it. He used another image that stayed with me too: once you open the gate on constitutional manipulation, you can’t close it. He’s not just fighting for 2030. He’s fighting for what comes after. What struck me most, though, wasn’t the scale of what he’d lost, it was the humanness of what he wants back. He wants to go home. He wants to garden. He mentioned flowers, which felt unbearably poignant given the threat he’d received. He loves his country. He wants to keep fighting for it.

Whether the amendments succeed is not certain. Analysts point to the fractures within Zanu-PF, the lingering question of what Chiwenga does next, and a fragmented but present opposition provides complications that the ruling party hasn’t fully resolved. But uncertainty about the outcome doesn’t mean safety for the people caught in the middle of it. My conversation with Matete made me realize that what’s happening in Zimbabwe raises a bigger concern: how easily legal systems can be reshaped to extend political control and how ordinary people are left to live with the consequences.

Somewhere, Matete is attending counselling sessions, trying to sleep without nightmares, waiting for the moment when it might be safe to go home and plant something. He’s not waiting to give up. He’s waiting to go back home.

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