Author name: Brett Herron

DECORUM IN COURT: SENZO MEYIWA JUDGE OFFSIDES

/ GOOD Statement / By

In a country still navigating the painful legacy of racial division, those entrusted with upholding the Constitution must be held to the highest standards of impartiality, professionalism, and respect. It is deeply concerning that Judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng, presiding over the high-profile Senzo Meyiwa murder trial, made a racially charged remark live on television. The frustrated judge said “This is what happens in a South Africa run by Blacks. A White advocate will never have the gall to ask me that,” in response to a formal request by Advocate Charles Mnisi, who had advised the court that he would be unavailable on Monday due to participation in Sunday’s Comrades Marathon.

DECORUM IN COURT: SENZO MEYIWA JUDGE OFFSIDES Read More »

CHANELLE PLAATJIES IS MORE THAN A NAME: THE WESTERN CAPE’S FAILURE TO PROTECT ITS GIRLS

/ GOOD Statement / By

Today, a female body was discovered during a community search for missing teenager, Chanelle Plaatjies. Chanelle was reported missing by her mother on May 28. We do not yet have confirmation that the body is hers nor whether there is evidence of any rape, but we do know this – Chanelle is more than a name, more than a photo on a missing poster. She is the face of a growing crisis, one that is swallowing our children, especially our girls, in silence and shadow. Gender-based violence and femicide are a national crisis, and the Western Cape is not immune. The statistics show that girls and women are no safer today, despite the province’s multi-billion-rand safety plan.

As we start Youth Month, running concurrently with Child Protection Week. We need to reflect on the environment our children are growing up in. When rape and murder become a normalised part of childhood in working-class communities, when children go missing and no emergency is declared, that is policy failure.

CHANELLE PLAATJIES IS MORE THAN A NAME: THE WESTERN CAPE’S FAILURE TO PROTECT ITS GIRLS Read More »

DONALD TRUMP’S SPIRITUAL ADVISER HAS JUST DEBUNKED CLAIMS OF AFRIKANER GENOCIDE

/ GOOD Statement / By

US President Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser may just have saved South Africa’s faltering relationship with the Western superpower. 

In a statement published while visiting South Africa, today, Pastor Mark Burns, the televangelist and board member of Pastors for Trump, who is widely described as President Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser, firmly debunked claims of a white genocide and suggested that Afrikaner refugees admitted into the US a few weeks ago were opportunists.

He said many of the White people he had engaged with in South Africa viewed Trump as a great President, but believed the President had been misinformed of a genocide “by people who wanted an excuse to leave”.

DONALD TRUMP’S SPIRITUAL ADVISER HAS JUST DEBUNKED CLAIMS OF AFRIKANER GENOCIDE Read More »

GEORGE BUILDING COLLAPSE: GOOD EXITS COUNCIL COALITION AFTER PLANNING MMC BANNED FROM SPEAKING

/ GOOD Statement / By

George Councillor Chantelle Kyd was the MMC for Planning in a coalition municipal government led by the DA, and the leading advocate in council for transparency around investigations into the collapsed George building, which claimed 34 lives last year.

But when the Council meets to table the first of two (technical and legal) investigations into the disaster tomorrow – confidentially, without media present – the DA caucus in the coalition has decided that it is too risky to allow Kyd to speak. The only members of the coalition allowed to speak are the mayor and deputy mayor, both representing the DA.

GEORGE BUILDING COLLAPSE: GOOD EXITS COUNCIL COALITION AFTER PLANNING MMC BANNED FROM SPEAKING Read More »

VACANT LAND: FROM OCCUPATION TO OWNERSHIP

/ GOOD Speech / By

A week ago, I stood here and welcomed the launch of 353-on-Main, the former Tafelberg site. It’s an important moment. It proves that public land can serve the public good. That affordable housing in well-located areas is not a dream, it’s entirely possible. But it also proves something else: that progress only happens when communities fight for it. Because this project wasn’t a gift. It was the result of tireless organising, legal battles, and public pressure.

That’s why I stand here again today, not just to acknowledge what was done, but to ask: why is this the exception, not the norm?

Across this province, thousands of people live on publicly owned land, in informal settlements that have existed for years. In 2023, this government managed to upgrade just one of them. One.

VACANT LAND: FROM OCCUPATION TO OWNERSHIP Read More »

TRC COMMISSION MUST OUT AUTHORS OF MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE

/ GOOD Statement / By

The establishment by the President of a commission of inquiry into decades-long delays in investigating and prosecuting apartheid-era cases effectively places the Thabo Mbeki administration and the NPA on trial for miscarriages of justice. Announcing the new commission today, the President said that for many years there had been allegations that “unacceptable delays” were due to interference.

Earlier this year, former President Mbeki strongly denied former head of prosecutions Vusi Pikoli’s claims, on affidavit, of political interference. Mbeki and his then Justice Minister, Bridget Mabandla, are opposing a damages claim launched by victims’ families. If Mbeki and/or Mabandla did not interfere, the only other possible finding available to the commission is that the NPA was controlled by rogue elements with the power to prevent apartheid era political leaders and their functionaries being held accountable for their crimes.

TRC COMMISSION MUST OUT AUTHORS OF MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE Read More »

DA SPOKESPERSON CONFIRMS: ISRAEL TRIP VIOLATED PARTY POLICY

/ GOOD Statement / By

The DA has acknowledged that its MPs who travelled to Israel to whitewash the genocidal actions of the Israeli Defense Force should be disciplined. During a Democracy Unplugged podcast hosted by Podcast Party SA last night, Democratic Alliance National Spokesperson Karabo Khakhau made a startling, and important, claim: the DA did not approve the recent trip to Israel by its MPs, and, in her words, “you can’t go there and pretend you’re not an MP.” Khakhau went further, acknowledging that the DA should take disciplinary action against the parliamentarians who joined the controversial delegation.

DA SPOKESPERSON CONFIRMS: ISRAEL TRIP VIOLATED PARTY POLICY Read More »

DEVOLUTION ISN’T A CURE, IT’S A DISTRACTION

/ GOOD Statement / By

The Western Cape Government has once again turned to its favourite scapegoat, National Government, calling for the devolution of policing powers as if that alone will put an end to the bloodshed on our streets. This latest call comes in the wake of another tragic quarter of crime data that paints a clear picture that the gangsters remain in charge, and the Western Cape Government is still out of ideas. From January to March 2025, 1,068 people were murdered in the Western Cape. While the province recorded a 4% decline from the same quarter last year, it shows that 81% of all murders in the province occur within the City of Cape Town alone.

DEVOLUTION ISN’T A CURE, IT’S A DISTRACTION Read More »

TREASURY’S PUNITIVE SOCIAL GRANT CONDITIONS AN ATTACK ON THE POOR

/ GOOD Statement / By

The GOOD Party is deeply concerned by the National Treasury’s imposition of punitive and exclusionary conditions on the 2025/26 operating budget of the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA). These conditions effectively extend the flawed administrative procedures of the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant to long-standing grants such as the Child Support Grant, Disability Grant, Care Dependency Grant, and Older Persons’ Grant.

TREASURY’S PUNITIVE SOCIAL GRANT CONDITIONS AN ATTACK ON THE POOR Read More »

DA RESPONSE TO RUPERT ABROGATES RESPONSIBILITY FOR WESTERN CAPE GANGSTERISM

/ GOOD Statement / By

The DA has outrageously washed its hands of responsibility for transforming the culture of gangsterism in the Western Cape until it is given control of the police. The party has been running the governments of Cape Town and the Western Cape for nearly two decades, more than long enough to implement its policies and programmes, but it takes no responsibility for gangsterism, which it blames solely on incompetent national policing.

DA RESPONSE TO RUPERT ABROGATES RESPONSIBILITY FOR WESTERN CAPE GANGSTERISM Read More »

Scroll to Top