Mavuso Msimang’s anthology arrives as a sustained indictment of institutional failure, written by a man who spent decades inside the very structures he now scrutinises.
“Between Hope and Vigilance: Prescriptions for a Wounded Nation” collects Msimang’s essays, speeches and opinion pieces into a coherent accountability framework, one that names office-holders, traces decision-making failures and measures the ANC government against the founding principles it claimed to uphold. The veteran, now in his late 80s, served as an uMkhonto we Sizwe combatant before holding senior positions in the democratic government. His December 2023 resignation from the ANC, and his subsequent decision to rescind it, form the postscript of the collection. Both choices are examined with the same candour he applies to others.
That candour is the book’s defining quality. Msimang does not write as an outsider reconstructing events. He was documenting the erosion of governance standards in real time, publishing primarily in City Press and Daily Maverick as events unfolded. This timing matters. What distinguishes his account from later commentary on state capture is precisely that it constitutes a contemporaneous record, not a retrospective one.
The opening sections establish the moral foundation for what follows. Msimang reconstructs the sacrifices of the liberation struggle, honouring figures whose contributions have been overshadowed by the movement’s more celebrated names. He writes of Sophie Theresa Williams, one of the leaders of the historic Women’s March to the Union Buildings in Pretoria in 1956, and insists that the values of liberation were upheld by tens of thousands of ordinary members, not merely the dozen or so names routinely invoked. His account of South Africa’s subjugation, brutalisation and dispossession, from the era of settlers to the mines, is presented as a foundation for understanding what was fought for and what has since been squandered.
Part Three moves directly to institutional accountability. Under the heading “Corruption: Its Enablers, Factions, Closing Ranks, Party and State Capture”, Msimang returns to themes he first raised in 2015, naming specific actors whose conduct hollowed out the party and corroded the nation’s economic strength. His targets include Jacob Zuma, Ace Magashule, Julius Malema, Floyd Shivambu and the Gupta brothers. The accountability framework underpinning this section rests on a clear principle: those who hold power must be held to a higher standard than the liberation fighters who preceded them.
In a 2017 City Press piece titled “Attacking the stalwarts won’t solve the ANC’s woes”, Msimang wrote that recognising the organisation’s need for vigorous reform requires people to think and act fearlessly. “Credibility will elude us if we are not brutally frank about our situation,” he stated. Those he criticised responded with hostility. He did not retreat.
By contrast, the final section of the collection, “Love Nature, and Protect the Salt of the Earth”, shifts the accountability lens toward environmental governance and conservation policy. As a founder of African Parks and former CEO of SANParks, Msimang brings institutional experience to this domain. He criticises the state’s largely rhetorical approach to conservation while identifying opportunities for reform. A 2023 Daily Maverick article included in the collection notes that nature-based tourism constitutes the fastest-growing tourism sector in South Africa, pointing to biodiversity activities as both a conservation and economic opportunity that policy has yet to fully capture.
The postscript, covering his resignation and its rescission, offers rare transparency into Msimang’s own institutional decisions. He holds himself to the standard he applies to others, which is itself a form of accountability that public figures seldom volunteer.
The collection ultimately poses a question it does not fully answer: whether democracy under ANC rule has simply replaced one set of constraints with another. That question, directed squarely at the accountability of those in power and the fulfilment of the movement’s founding mandate, is one South African governance will be contending with long after this book is read.