‘Active and engaged public intellectuals play a crucial role in the ongoing life of democratic societies’, perhaps even more so in new democracies like South Africa, William Gumede and Leslie Dikeni write in this week’s Pambazuka News. In an extract from their new book, ‘The Poverty of Ideas’, Gumede and Dikeni make the case for opening up the ‘space for debate, dissent and public dialogue’ and reversing a culture of intolerance that flourished under the Mbeki administration.