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        <title>Polity.org.za | Other Opinions</title>
        <description><![CDATA[Polity.org.za offers a unique take on news, with a focus on political, legal, economic and social issues in South Africa and Africa, as well as international affairs. Polity strives to provide our readers reliable and objective reporting on important issues that drive our society.]]></description>
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            <title>Mbeki is not the 'super president'</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/mbeki-is-not-the-super-president-2026-06-02</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Mpumelelo Mkhabela is not given to cheap political theatre. He is usually a level-headed analyst, with the rare gift of making his point without sounding as if he is auditioning for higher office, unlike some who confuse television panels with Cabinet interviews. So, when Mkhabela writes in News24 on 27 May under the headline, “‘Super president’ in the shadows: Why Mbeki can’t – and won’t – let go”, one must take the provocation seriously, even while disagreeing with its central anxiety. The headline is deliberately loaded. It invites us to see former President Thabo Mbeki’s continued public engagement not as civic duty, intellectual labour or elder statesmanship, but as an inability to release the levers of power. That framing deserves scrutiny, precisely because it mistakes intervention for interference and memory for ambition.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 09:23:00 +0200</pubDate>
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        <image_title>Former President Thabo Mbeki </image_title>
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            <title>Opinion: South Africa's Digital Identity Regulations: A Governance Crossroads</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/opinion-south-africas-digital-identity-regulations-a-governance-crossroads-2026-05-29</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Can new rules unlock integrated public services without eroding citizen control?, asks Mark Burke in this latest opinion article. For well over a decade, government departments have produced frameworks, strategies, and plans promising seamless digital services, efficiency, and integrated public administration. The National Development Plan 2030 identified efficient identity management as foundational to inclusive economic development. The Department of Home Affairs launched its modernisation programme in 2012. The Draft Official Identity Management Policy of 2020 sketched a comprehensive vision for transitioning from legacy systems to digital credentials. Until now, the gap between the search for efficient identity management as the basis for integrated service delivery and the reality of making it happen has remained stubbornly wide.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 12:01:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>722449</a_id>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>OPINION: How can South Africa leverage digital public infrastructure for improved educational ...</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/opinion-how-can-south-africa-leverage-digital-public-infrastructure-for-improved-educational-outcomes-2026-05-22</link>
            <description><![CDATA[South Africa’s education system has no shortage of policy ambition. It has strategies, data systems, institutional mandates, and a growing national agenda for digital transformation. Much of the system, however, is still fragmented, writes Mark Burke in this latest opinion article. Learner records sit in different databases. Schools, colleges, universities, funding agencies, and qualification authorities collect overlapping information through separate processes. Provinces work with uneven capacity and uneven systems. Some digital tools are improving, but mostly within institutional silos. That is the setting in which Digital Public Infrastructure, or DPI, becomes relevant. The question is whether South Africa can use the current push for digital identity, data exchange, and digital payments to make education services more coherent from school entry to post-school transitions and into work.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 11:58:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721916</a_id>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>Africa’s crisis is institutional before it is continental</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/africas-crisis-is-institutional-before-it-is-continental-2026-05-22</link>
            <description><![CDATA[The Thabo Mbeki Foundation’s Africa Day 2026 theme, “Rebuilding African Unity in an Age of Fragmentation: Sovereignty, Solidarity, and the Renewal of Institutions”, compels Africa to confront a hard truth. The continent’s deepest fragmentation crisis is not the existence of borders, languages, regions, religions, or political traditions. Africa has always contained multiplicity: its unity never required sameness. The structural crisis is the collapse of institutional legitimacy. Institutional ...]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 10:19:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721885</a_id>
        <updated>1779438093</updated>
        <published>1779437940</published>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>South Africa cannot carry Africa’s migration burden alone</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/south-africa-cannot-carry-africas-migration-burden-alone-2026-05-21</link>
            <description><![CDATA[A constitutional democracy founded on dignity, equality and the rule of law must hold firmly to those principles. Violence against foreign nationals is unlawful, morally indefensible and damaging to the country’s social fabric and global standing. There can be no justification for it. But there is another truth that must be confronted with equal clarity. South Africans are living with real and visible pressures, many of which are intensified by porous borders and weak immigration enforcement. Communities are not imagining overcrowded clinics, strained schools, illegally occupied buildings, informal economies operating outside regulation, or the growing sense that the state is losing control in parts of its own territory. To acknowledge this is not xenophobia. It is a call for governance.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 14:58:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721812</a_id>
        <updated>1779368648</updated>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>The end of strategic ambiguity as Africa’s security alignments become operational</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/the-end-of-strategic-ambiguity-as-africas-security-alignments-become-operational-2026-05-20</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Analysis in brief: In pursuit of safe countries where citizens can prosper and investors feel secure, Africa is using its new geopolitical positioning in a multipolar world to reshape foreign relationships away from traditional aid and raw-resource trade. The repositioning aims to build more equitable relationships that can strengthen Africa’s security goals. Any government’s primary duty is to protect its citizens from harm, from natural disasters to man-made security threats, such as domestic terrorism and incursions by foreign entities. Security is the bedrock of a stable and prosperous society. It is also a primary consideration for investors, who seek environments where their business interests can operate freely without concern over crime or conflict.]]></description>
            <author>In On Africa  IOA</author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 11:36:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721678</a_id>
        <updated>1779269983</updated>
        <published>1779269760</published>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>[OPINION] The Digital Life of Citizen X: Information Highways, Data, and Digital Sovereignty</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/the-digital-life-of-citizen-x-information-highways-data-and-digital-sovereignty-2026-05-15</link>
            <description><![CDATA[This opinion article by Mark Burke looks at where South Africa's data is physically hosted and who owns and controls the infrastructure that stores citizens' data across public and private sector systems.  The Informational Travels of Citizen X]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 14:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>721421</a_id>
        <updated>1778852057</updated>
        <published>1778849100</published>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>Opinion: The Political Economy of Digital Public Infrastructure Adoption in Digital Identity Systems</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/the-political-economy-of-digital-public-infrastructure-adoption-in-digital-identity-systems-how-the-interests-incentives-and-influence-of-actors-shape-the-prospects-for-data-sovereignty-and-control-by-citizens-2026-05-08</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has emerged as the dominant framework through which states pursue digital transformation, Mark Burke notes in this opinion article. Proponents describe it as a "societal operating system", functioning through a set of shared, interoperable digital systems built on open standards that enable population-scale service delivery across health, finance, and social protection. The architecture is presented as an "architecture of opportunity" - as open, inclusive, ...]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 14:46:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720891</a_id>
        <updated>1778248166</updated>
        <published>1778244360</published>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>Fragmentation in South Africa’s digital identity regulatory and institutional framework: ...</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/fragmentation-in-south-africas-digital-identity-regulatory-and-institutional-framework-implications-for-citizen-control-of-their-data-2026-05-05</link>
            <description><![CDATA[One of the biggest challenges in South Africa’s emerging digital identity system is fragmentation. In this opinion article, Mark Burke notes that this means that the policies, laws, institutions, and technologies involved have grown in disconnected ways over time. This fragmentation has a real impact on ordinary people, because it affects how well they can control how their personal information is collected, shared, and used. This essay examines fragmentation across policy, law, institutions, and technology. It argues that South Africa’s current regulatory and institutional landscape, characterised by disconnected policy frameworks, overlapping legal mandates, uncoordinated institutional oversight, and technically incompatible legacy systems, systematically and structurally undermines the possibility of genuine citizen control over data in digital identity systems.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720528</a_id>
        <updated>1777973130</updated>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>Can South Africa build a digital identity system that gives citizens real control over their data?</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/can-south-africa-build-a-digital-identity-system-that-gives-citizens-real-control-over-their-data-2026-05-04</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Over the last decade, thinking about digital identity has shifted. Traditionally, governments collected personal information, stored it in central systems, and controlled how it was used. Newer approaches aim to keep the state’s role in confirming identity, while giving individuals more say over what information they share, with whom, and in what context, so that a person can provide what is needed for a transaction without revealing everything on record. This matters because it changes the balance of power between the individual and the system. In South Africa, the stakes are higher given the country’s history of state surveillance under apartheid and the reality that access to devices, data, and digital skills remains unequal. A digital identity system that is meant to serve everyone should therefore align with constitutional commitments to privacy, dignity, and equality, and be designed to reduce exclusion rather than deepen it.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 15:14:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>720473</a_id>
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