When Jacob Zuma was elected as leader at the ANC party conference in Polokwane last December, it was divisive act.
Although he saw the timing and manner of the prime minister's statement as a personal snub and deeply divisive act for the party, he brushed aside questions about the political furore at home, saying it was business as usual.
It was the day's most divisive act.
Many hailed it as an important defense of free expression and an act of defiance against the extremists attempting to silence the magazine, while others decried it as a divisive act that was unnecessarily offensive to millions of Muslims.
John McDonnell MP, shadow chancellor, has said that a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn would repeal the divisive Immigration Act.
Elsewhere, the vestiges of Labour's divisive Equality Act – public sector equality audits, gender quotas, etc – should be scrapped and replaced with family friendly support for working couples, like transferable parental leave (a Lib Dem idea) and transferable income tax allowances (a Tory one).
In an editorial at the time, The New York Times stated that the Nixon pardon was "a profoundly unwise, divisive and unjust act" that in a stroke had destroyed the new president's "credibility as a man of judgment, candor and competence".
In a culturally divisive time, The New Dance Show acted like the Pied Piper, luring suburban kids into the city and city kids out into the clubs, ultimately helping to nurture an underground dance music scene where gender, ethnicity, socioeconomics, race and sexual orientation were, inexplicably, practically a non-issue.
Hip-hop acts had divisive responses in the early 2010s before going on to become reliable draws on the festival bill (the 2015 lineup featured on-point sets from Tkay Maidza, Briggs and Big Daddy Kane).
Cotton was discussing Indiana's divisive Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which passed into law earlier this week.
