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Constitutional Validity Maintained: The Constitutional Court Declines to Strike Down Section 10(2) of the Recognition Act

Constitutional Validity Maintained: The Constitutional Court Declines to Strike Down Section 10(2) of the Recognition Act By Ocean Postman On 21 January 2026, the Constitutional Court handed down their decision in a landmark case that will come to define how we understand the synchronous presence of both customary and civil marriages in South Africa. The Court’s ruling served to clarify and affirm that customary marriages and civil marriages remain on par with one another and caution South Africans entering into these marriage arrangements to understand the rule of law as it applies to both. The judgement was in the case VVC v JRM and Others, where the High Court previously upheld that certain impugned provisions of the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act , namely as it pertains to section 10(2), were unconstitutional. Upon application for its validity, the Constitutional Court did not confirm the High court’s position.  photo source: unsplash.com Instead, the Constitutional co...
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Declining Birthrate Is No Cause for Celebration

  Declining Birth Rates Are No Cause for Celebration By Ocean Postman Stats SA has reported a decline in South Africa’s fertility rate from 2,78 children per woman to 2,21 in the Mid-Year Population Estimates report , 2025. They confirm that this decline is part of a trend that began in 2020 that has seen the average number of children a woman would have in her life declining over the past five years.   One might view this as a positive outcome, credited to a concerted effort by the government to ensure greater access in the provision of contraceptives. Evidence of the government’s commitments on paper to expanding contraceptive access includes its adoption of the Family Planning 2020 Initiative, a multinational effort to expand access to reproductive related healthcare. The state’s “rights-based” approach to healthcare policy related to reproductive care is, on its face, promising. It would certainly be a great stride forward in the aim towards women’s rights if this we...
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Dangerous Liaisons: Trump, Afriforum and Right Wing Lobbying

Americans paying attention to Donald J Trump’s recent social media posts, may have seen him posting on Truth social media platform and X about South Africa, no doubt one of the countries he had in mind when he called Haiti and African nations “shithole countries” in 2018 during his previous stint as president. In the recent post about South Africa, he had this to say:              “South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly. It is a bad   situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention. A massive human rights   violation, at a minimum, is happening for all to see. The United States won’t stand for it, we will act.      Also, I will be cutting all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed.” The South African presidency has already responded to Trump’s claims, clearly stating that no land confiscation has o...
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The African National Congress in South Africa: Reflecting on a Hollow Liberation

  The African National Congress in South Africa: Reflecting on a Hollow Liberation The African National Congress held celebrations for its 113th anniversary on January 11.  Its origins are as a struggle movement against the apartheid regime in South Africa, and as a partner to workers and allied with the country’s communist party. Its contemporary status is as the ruling party of the country for the past 30 years, having recently lost its majority share of the vote in recently held general elections . The ANC has been accused of “ selling out ” on its promise to foster the creation of an equitable South Africa for all by the South African Communist Party (SACP) with which it is formally allied. Perhaps its recent loss of political dominance is a condemnation of this failure to deliver on its mandate. It has now entered into a coalition government with other parties including longtime official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. During the struggle in the 1980s as a libe...
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Mozambique Forms Its Government, but Question of Geopolitical Risks Still Remains Unanswered

  Mozambique Forms Its Government, but Question of Geopolitical Risks Still Remains Unanswered by Ocean Postman T his past year was a major election year during which the democratic system was tested in many countries around the world . Mozambique’s general elections, held on October 9, were found to have been irregular, but the result was still accepted by the Mozambique Constitutional Council, which declared the results legitimate. This is despite recent anti-government protests by Mozambicans. The ruling party, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) thus remains in power, as they have for the past 50 years. In a country marked by a recent history of civil war, the threat of political violence was realized in these most recent elections which produced deadly protests. The fairness of the elections remains in dispute, whilst the previously held 2019 general election set a precedent as the least fair elections since 1994 .  Mozambique remains a resource rich ec...
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Reflecting on the General Election Results

South Africa’s national general elections saw a decrease in turnout, the formation of a coalition government as a result of declining support for the  former ruling party the ANC, and the emergence of the new populist leaning MK Party. Overall, South Africa’s democracy has entered a new era wherein the possibilities for a renewal of democracy are possible, but the precedent for coalition governance in the country points towards instability. As stated, what South Africa needs is for political parties to engage collaboratively, to put aside ideological differences with the aim of improving upon the socio-economic challenges that South Africans face.  What is revealed in a close analysis of the general election outcome, is that South Africa has not been entirely immune to the global populist wave. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) lost its outright parliamentary majority which had made it the dominant party for close to thirty years. At least one of the parties which hel...
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