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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>The Achilles’ heel of South Africa: Local government</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/the-achilles-heel-of-south-africa-local-government-2026-06-22</link>
            <description><![CDATA[We are only halfway through the year, but arguably the most important political event of 2026 will be the local government elections on 4 November, 5 months from now. Whatever metric one chooses – and there are many – local government is by far the weakest-performing of South Africa's 3 spheres of government. That makes these elections particularly significant. People and institutions]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:34:00 +0200</pubDate>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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        <image_title>JP Landman</image_title>
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            <title>Social Grants and the Future of Digital Payments in South Africa</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/social-grants-and-the-future-of-digital-payments-in-south-africa-2026-06-15</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Social protection remains one of the most visible, impactful, and fundamentally necessary pillars of South Africa’s democratic settlement. The post-apartheid state was established on a commitment to human dignity, equality, and the progressive realisation of socioeconomic rights. Chief among these is the right of access to social security, including appropriate social assistance for those unable to support themselves and their dependants, which is enshrined and protected in section 27(1)(c) of ...]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 11:41:00 +0200</pubDate>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>Unprepared projects hold back climate finance</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/unprepared-projects-hold-back-climate-finance-2026-06-12</link>
            <description><![CDATA[After three years of following JET money, Thabo Molelekwa finds the focus of high-level discussions now is how to prepare and implement projects South Africa has secured almost $14-billion in international climate finance commitments since launching its Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with wealthy donor countries to fund the shift away from fossil fuels in 2021.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:14:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>723430</a_id>
        <updated>1781266878</updated>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>Opinion: Reimagining public health service design in the era of National Health Insurance and ...</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/opinion-reimagining-public-health-service-design-in-the-era-of-national-health-insurance-and-digital-health-2026-06-05</link>
            <description><![CDATA[South Africa's health system carries the heavy imprint of history. The apartheid era bequeathed a fragmented, inequitable system in which race determined access to care, geographic distribution of resources favoured white minority areas, and public facilities serving the black majority were systematically under-resourced. Nearly three decades after the democratic transition, these inequities persist, writes Mark Burke in this latest opinion article. The country spends roughly 8.5% of GDP on health (comparable to many OECD nations), yet achieves outcomes more typical of lower-income countries. Life expectancy, which rose from 52 years in 2005 to 61 years by 2021, largely driven by the scale-up of antiretroviral therapy, remains below the global average for upper-middle-income countries.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:16:00 +0200</pubDate>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title> Is local lagging?</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/is-local-lagging-2026-06-05</link>
            <description><![CDATA[Billions are flowing into South Africa’s green economy. #PowerTracker investigates whether local manufacturers, workers and communities are truly benefitting The Atlantis Special Economic Zone (ASEZ) in the Western Cape was established in 2020 to attract green economy investment and support local manufacturing.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 09:23:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>722952</a_id>
        <updated>1780644758</updated>
        <published>1780644180</published>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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            <title>The cage, the bullet and the border: How Southern Africa punishes dissent and why our region ...</title>
            <link>https://www.polity.org.za/article/the-cage-the-bullet-and-the-border-how-southern-africa-punishes-dissent-and-why-our-region-must-reclaim-its-institutions-2026-06-04</link>
            <description><![CDATA[From Harare to Dar es Salaam to Mbabane to Lusaka, governments have learned they no longer need a guilty verdict to silence critics. They need a cell, a charge sheet, and a calendar they control. When the cell will not do, there is the bullet and, for those who survive, the border. At the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), we see this pattern every other week. The question is whether the region's institutions are strong enough to stop this crisis. On Africa Day, while the political class delivered its annual sermons on liberation and sovereignty, former minister Walter Mzembi walked back through the gates of Harare Remand Prison. Not as a prisoner this time, he had been acquitted a fortnight earlier after more than ten months in detention on charges that ultimately collapsed into nothing, but as a visitor. He had come to see Godfrey Karembera, the activist Zimbabwe knows as Madzibaba VeShanduko, whom he called one of his ‘sons’ from his own months inside.]]></description>
            <author>Creamer Media Reporter  </author>
            <category>Other Opinions</category>
            <pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:23:00 +0200</pubDate>
        <a_id>722834</a_id>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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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>
        <a_id>722616</a_id>
        <updated>1780389182</updated>
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        <editor>Creamer Media Reporter  </editor>
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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>
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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>
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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>
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