Our Long Walk

1 week ago | ourlongwalk.com | Johan Fourie

Almost every morning, as I sit at my desk, I watch the sky turn from dark blue to bright yellow over Joubertspiek, the gable-shaped rocky hill next to Simonsberg. Yet I’ve never thought much about the origin of the name Joubertspiek – Joubert’s Peak. That changed over the Christmas break last year, when I found myself in search of some holiday reading. I’m an economic historian. Most of my research focuses on the early Cape Colony.

1 week ago | ourlongwalk.com | Johan Fourie

Every morning in 2024, as I walked from my front door to the car, my toddler would gaze up at Botmaskop. The mountain was alive with bulldozers, diggers and tipper trucks, and he loved naming each one. I joined his fascination, wondering what new homes might soon rise from those terraces carved into the slopes. Who would occupy such spectacular vantage points, and what kind of lives would they build there? Then, suddenly, early in 2025, the construction vehicles vanished.

2 weeks ago | ourlongwalk.com | Johan Fourie

The modern state has many enemies. Some want to loot it. Others want to shrink it. And a few may want to rule it like a fief. Distinguishing clearly between these different threats is vital. South Africa’s recent past, marked by a political phenomenon widely known as ‘state capture’, provides one particularly stark example. But the United States today faces a different challenge, one that is, I will argue below, an older one.

2 weeks ago | ourlongwalk.com | Johan Fourie

The elephant was always there. Not at first in shape or sound, but in the slight pressure she placed on the air, the quiet rearrangement of shadows, the way the earth shifted faintly beneath her tread. You could walk beside her for miles before noticing. That was her gift, and perhaps her burden too. They moved as a trio beneath the brittle sky, shadows thin and slow across the pale tar.

3 weeks ago | ourlongwalk.com | Johan Fourie

In Homer’s Odyssey, the Greek hero Odysseus encounters the Sirens – mythical creatures whose enchanting songs lure sailors to their doom on the rocks. Forewarned, he plugs his crew’s ears with wax and binds himself to the mast, resisting their temptation. Today, South Africa faces its own kind of Siren song: the seductive idea that a financial reconfiguration – what some call Monetary Architecture (MA) – can unlock economic transformation without consequence.