TheHippo

into the dying of the night. I quandrant bound.#GlookD Live without fear,love without hate. #Mayibuye

[TheHippo @S_dotontop]

May the harvest of 2022
Be as bountiful as this garden
It's prayer not a demand
It is the land by the hand
The fruit of faith
The soil of santitude

2022-the power of 2 in 1 year https://t.co/pcIoUMOlqW

[TheHippo @S_dotontop]

Why are they booing us ? #worldcup2026

[CertifiedEcoTourismDoyenne @ms_tourist]

I was today years old when I learned that King Shaka Zulu had 2x sons, Mbuyazi and Cetshwayo. Impi Yase Ndondakusuka was between the 2 brothers. The war was brutal and that resulted in some not being buried. Their bodies turned into bones and the place was named “ Emathanjeni” … Today the place is known as EMandeni… See our history gets distorted ? Today’s history lesson was very emotional..

[Aviwe Ndabazipheli @Aviwe_ii]

The Tswayza show ft @Robot_Boii 🔥🔥
robot 🤖 owes us a hip-hop album ngeke💯

[Sizwe SikaMusi @SizweLo]

Let’s talk about how Joe Slovo successfully proposed the Sunset Clause.

In short, the Sunset Clause was an agreement in 1992 that there would be a coalition government for five years following democratic elections, guarantees for civil servants and an amnesty process.

This proposed arrangement involved the gradual phasing out of White rule rather than a revolutionary handover of power.

The Clause ensured that White institutional power survived the transition, particularly in the civil service, the military, the police, and most crucially, the economy.

Now, besides the obviously controversial nature of the proposal, there is something even more glaring here: Joe Slovo was a White man.

Why is this important?

Regardless of him being a Communist and struggle stalwart, Joe Slovo was still a White man tasked with negotiating with fellow White people on behalf of Black people.

This may be an uncomfortable point, but it has to be brought to the foreground.

It’s not possible, and indeed counterproductive, to try and get away from the fact that Joe Slovo being a White man shaped both how he was perceived and how he could operate politically.

It’s true that within the ANC and SACP, Slovo was respected and trusted, not only because of his race but also because of decades of genuine commitment, going underground, enduring exile, founding and leading the armed struggle as MK’s chief of staff, and living under the same risks as his Black comrades.

But it’s also true that his Whiteness gave him a particular positional advantage in negotiations and in how his proposals were received by the Apartheid regime.

Any Black South African who has dealt with White South Africans will immediately understand how FW de Klerk’s team and the NP elite could talk to Slovo in a way they could not talk to Black cadres, not only linguistically or culturally, but psychologically.

Slovo was someone the Apartheid regime recognised as “one of their own kind” in a society structured by White dominance, even as he stood against them politically.

Now, here is the unavoidable irony: A White man designed and led a compromise that would shape the post-Apartheid state to the disaster it has turned out to be.

The fact that a White intellectual brokered this very key concession is a clear reflection of the racialised power structures that shape South Africa and how White power, both economic and bureaucratic, remains to this day an entrenched reality.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the “compromise” Slovo proposed and subsequently got implemented was, in effect, a negotiation between two White political mindsets.

It may be awkward for some, but there’s no denying that Slovo’s race is the primary reason the Sunset Clause could be accepted by the NP: it came from someone they didn’t perceive as threateningly “other.” It reassured them that the transition could happen without the total erasure of White authority.

Fast forward to today. It has become normalised and even expected to see White voices being platformed to speak to issues that fundamentally concern Black people’s economic and political self-determination.

This isn’t about whether White people are knowledgeable or well-intentioned.

It’s not even about White people themselves, it’s about the structural pattern where White voices are amplified and centred even in spaces explicitly created for Black empowerment.

This pattern perpetuates the message that Black perspectives need White validation and White articulation to be taken seriously. That Black people cannot be trusted to analyse their own conditions and chart their own course.

The fact that this keeps happening, from CODESA to this day is a sign of how deeply entrenched these patterns remain.

[Siboniso KaMabaso @ZuluSweG]

Always ask yourself if my 2nd wife will be able to level with uNdlunkulu, kuhle ukuganwa majongo buka nje thina esahlonipha imizi yabanomnzane ukuthi sibusa kanjani, uthe uma ekuletha wafike waguqa wayesengicela “ngicela udle mntungwa usho ndabezitha uma engenelanga ubaba ngizomphinda”

[Kabelo Kungwane @KabeloKungwan]

Scoop Makhatini for @kasiflavour10 ⚽️ ❤️ Mainstay Cup 2025
📷 @ItuTHEgod ✨

[Ta Hlumza 🕴🏾 @Ta_Hlumza]

Jo-Anne's talent is just - 🤌🏽

Put her on a suburb and she will deliver a stellar performance of a rich housewife. You put her on a village in KZN, where the society is patriarchal, she will deliver a heartwreching performance that is layered and crafted.

#ShutUpMenAreTalking

[TyCun @TheRealTyCun]

Power Rangers: Then and Now 😳

You recognize them?

[PHABO 🧸 @whoisphabo]

Real rockstar shit 😂🤘🏾🕊️

[Thomas Mlambo @thomasmlambo]

.@kasiflavour10, you know what to do..

[TheHippo @S_dotontop]

@insidemanifest 111

[TheHippo @S_dotontop]

@MacGUnleashed on @Shakailembe_ now that was a genius move.

[Sizwe SikaMusi @SizweLo]

Let’s briefly contextualise General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s actions yesterday.

First, let’s get something out of the way: The primary role of the SAPS is not to fight crime; it’s to protect the country’s elites.

There’s a reason why, since Jackie Selebi, every single SAPS National Commissioner has left office in disgrace, whether due to corruption charges, suspensions, or public scandals.

This is no coincidence. It’s because the Commissioner is not appointed to lead a crime-fighting institution, but to serve as a shield, to absorb public outrage, suppress investigations and protect powerful interests in both the public and private sectors. Successive presidents, from Mbeki to Zuma to Ramaphosa, have all used the SAPS for political ends, just in different ways.

Thabo Mbeki governed through technocratic ministries, especially Justice and Intelligence. His presidency relied on legal and procedural instruments to enforce political discipline. Justice Ministers like Penuell Maduna and Bridgette Mabandla were key players in shaping the NPA, which Mbeki used to pursue, contain, or remove opponents, most famously, Jacob Zuma.

The SAPS under Mbeki was subordinated to this legalist strategy. Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, while politically connected, operated within a tightly controlled framework. When it was politically convenient, Mbeki discarded him with ease. Mbeki ruled through technocratic legal gatekeeping, not brute police force.

Zuma took the opposite route. Having been targeted by the justice system under Mbeki, his first priority was to neutralise it. He oversaw the disbanding of the Scorpions and repurposed the SAPS, the State Security Agency and Crime Intelligence (remember Richard Mdluli?) as instruments of state control.

His appointments to the National Police Commissioner role were chosen solely for loyalty. Throughout his presidency, Zuma governed defensively. Where Mbeki used the law as a weapon, Zuma used the police as armour.

As far as the National Police Commissioner was concerned, it was not difficult for Zuma to do since the Commissioner is appointed by the President, is accountable to the executive and can be easily used to absorb public outrage, hence they all resigned in disgrace.

Since 2018, Cyril Ramaphosa has returned to the Mbeki-style strategy: recentralising power in the Justice cluster through the NPA, SIU, and Police Ministers, while marginalising the Commissioner, making the office an administrative ghost.

What General Mkhwanazi recently exposed is precisely this: under Ramaphosa, Ministers act as political operators. Certain syndicates are protected. Crime Intelligence is manipulated. Accountability is diverted away from the Presidency and concentrated in politically trusted actors.

The SAPS has not failed. It’s doing exactly what it’s always been used for: shielding the centre of power and absorbing public anger. This is not a failure of individuals but a designed dysfunction in the service of political preservation. The appointment structure (Presidential prerogative) ensures loyalty, not independence.

Okay, but why do political elites find themselves at the mercy of criminal syndicates that they then have to mobilise the SAPS to protect? Why is Senzo Mchunu, an entire Minister of Police, entangled with dubious figures such as Vusi “Cat” Matlala in the first place?

Simple: money. Specifically, dark money.
In South Africa’s political economy, institutional or “clean” capital, like Oppenheimer millions, is reserved for a certain kind of politician. Just look at who got that money in the 2024 elections.

Everyone else must fend for themselves. And when your campaign or party depends on shady money, you inherit the shady networks that come with it. Once in power, you need protection from the media, the public, and, often, from your own funders. That’s where the SAPS comes in.

In essence, General Mkhwanazi’s actions yesterday weren't just whistleblowing; they were a rare peek into the machinery of political protection.

[Mageba @Mageba_____]

Loadshedding during apartheid 😂😭✋

[TheHippo @S_dotontop]

@Sadmethod @ZuluSweG awubheke ngapha

[Sizwe SikaMusi @SizweLo]

Between 1994 and 1996, South Africa experienced severe jobless growth—economic expansion without corresponding employment gains. Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela decided the solution was to open the economy to foreign competition and invite foreign investment.

This thinking culminated in the adoption of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy in 1996. GEAR was a macroeconomic plan that promised to attract investment, stimulate growth, and, most importantly, create jobs.

It was presented not just as policy, but as a bold national commitment. GEAR would deliver 1.35 million new jobs by the year 2000, with 833 000 of those directly linked to its implementation.

The architects of the plan laid out the strategy with technocratic precision: 308 000 jobs would arise from higher economic growth, 325 000 from labour market “flexibility,” and 200 000 through government-led public works and infrastructure projects.

But the reality turned out to be quite different. Far from creating jobs, South Africa lost more than half a million non-agricultural jobs between 1996 and 2000.

Instead of ushering in an era of inclusive growth, GEAR deepened structural unemployment. Economic liberalisation brought with it imported, labour-saving technologies, widespread outsourcing, and the casualisation of work.

The investors South Africa had gone to great lengths to court were not interested in job creation—they were interested in cutting labour costs and maximising profit margins.

Labour market “flexibility,” it turned out, meant easier dismissal procedures, weakened collective bargaining, and the gradual erosion of full-time, secure employment.

Job security—already precarious for the Black majority—became a luxury only the few could afford. The sectors that were supposed to drive post-apartheid development, like mining, manufacturing, transport, and construction, became centres of retrenchment.

The non-agricultural unemployment rate hit 22.9% by 1999, and when discouraged workers were included, the expanded rate ballooned to 37.6%, up from 31.5% in 1994.

Even agriculture, once a large rural employer, was not spared. In response to new labour legislation aimed at improving working conditions for farmworkers, many farmers chose to mechanise production and retrench workers.

An estimated 200 000 jobs were lost in agriculture alone, further deepening rural poverty and displacing thousands of families.
Gold mining, the historical backbone of the economy, became a symbol of collapse.

Between June 1996 and March 1999, gold mining alone accounted for 40% of all formal job losses. In just the six months leading to March 1998, nearly 100,000 mining jobs vanished.

Manufacturing, supposedly the biggest beneficiary of trade liberalisation, lost 75,000 jobs in the year leading to March 1998, making up 36% of total job losses during that period.

By the end of the decade, the social impact was undeniable. A COSATU survey found that 69% of unemployed people had never held a formal job, highlighting the permanent nature of exclusion.

The burden of this crisis fell overwhelmingly on Black South Africans: 4.2 million Africans were unemployed in 1999, including 1.9 million youth under 29.

A study by the Gauteng Department of Housing and Land Affairs found that between 16% and 40% of households in informal settlements could not afford basic food, and between 47% and 68% were never able to save. The worst conditions were found in areas where job losses had been most acute.

GEAR didn’t fail because it was poorly implemented. It failed because it was based on flawed assumptions—that foreign capital would build factories and hire workers, that deregulated markets would automatically lift the poor, and that growth alone could undo Apartheid’s structural inequality.

In reality, the types of foreign investment that flowed in were capital-intensive, not labour-absorbing, focused on sectors like mining, finance, and telecommunications. These investors brought machines, not jobs.
GEAR was not a spontaneous misstep.

It was South Africa’s version of the Washington Consensus—a package of liberalising reforms promoted by the IMF and World Bank across the Global South. The country’s new technocratic elite, many trained in Western economics departments, embraced this orthodoxy with zeal.

The language of social justice was replaced with the grammar of fiscal discipline. Other countries that emerged from poverty and conflict, such as South Korea and Taiwan, opted for state-led industrial policy that absorbed labour and built domestic capacity. South Africa, by contrast, handed its economic future to the invisible hand.

In the name of global competitiveness, GEAR prioritised capital mobility over human mobility, and macroeconomic “stability” over household survival.

It was a policy of obedience to markets, to ratings agencies, to orthodox economic thinking. The results were predictable, but tragic.

Even by 2000, when the evidence of failure was overwhelming, Thabo Mbeki remained loyal to the policy, continuing with GEAR until 2006, by which point its social damage was irreversible, and he was already preparing to contest a third term as ANC president.

GEAR was sold as a bridge to prosperity, but it became a barrier to inclusion. It entrenched unemployment, deepened inequality, and betrayed the hopes of millions who had dreamed of a better life after Apartheid.

In a country where work was once the axis around which dignity, identity, and survival revolved, GEAR didn’t just fail economically—it fractured the social contract. It told millions: your lives are less important than bond ratings.

GEAR was not merely a failed policy—it was a political choice, one that sacrificed the dreams of liberation at the altar of international capital.

[TheHippo @S_dotontop]

@castlelitesa @trvisXX Fein

[Sizwe SikaMusi @SizweLo]

This is like someone claiming ten thousand rands had gone missing and then coming back years later to say he made a mistake, it was actually R10.

The Zondo Commission was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on this already fake country.

[internet hall of fame @InternetH0F]

Oh i know that brain freeze is INSANE

[TheHippo @S_dotontop]

@Sandi_Sandz Now that major. About time coz uv always had the words.where do we purchase