Lindiwe Sisulu: trading on a famous South African surname has its limits

GAVIN EVANS|

THE world, for the most part, is organised on dynastic principles. Part of the rationale of capitalism is that wealth, and all that comes with it, cascades down the generations. Our laws sweep aside impediments to that succession. If your parents are rich, you’re highly unlikely to end up poor.

But in politics it is more complex. In democracies, the scions of the great men and women are not usually guaranteed the mantle of power, although India was a notable exception in the days of Congress Party rule.

They insisted, as they still do, that someone from the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty take the helm as leader.

Even without that kind of built-in largesse, the realities of wealth and access to power are often enough to ease the way upwards. So, for example, George W. Bush followed George H.W. Bush as US president after an eight year interregnum. When that