South Africa P.I.G.: SA POLITICS

Showing posts with label SA POLITICS. Show all posts

An open letter to SA’s leadership...

<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; CLEAR: both" class="separator"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAgJC-o3pB6FRLZWGjm6E2XBs8nSffUZXMgoW3qXlE5vH6mzgthgR0y-FCcJCHNI3rAMnvnrcxN_z1IGJPlvK1d5ngibRQlQfEjWZ3HfD0J4OSRmAMa28S-M65RYtLUl_I7Emrqe0T7_le/s1600/anc-running-water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 1em; MARGIN-RIGHT: 1em"><img border="0" height="378" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAgJC-o3pB6FRLZWGjm6E2XBs8nSffUZXMgoW3qXlE5vH6mzgthgR0y-FCcJCHNI3rAMnvnrcxN_z1IGJPlvK1d5ngibRQlQfEjWZ3HfD0J4OSRmAMa28S-M65RYtLUl_I7Emrqe0T7_le/s640/anc-running-water.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> I will try to answer three questions; 1. Which way are we going? 2. Why? 3. Can we find a better way forward? Apart from racial policy, the institute I head has been documenting almost every aspect of South Africa since our foundation in 1929. It was inevitable then that when the ANC came to power in 1994, people asked us why South Africa should not become just another African disaster. I gave the usual list of advantages: a greater pool of skills, good infrastructure, a resilient private sector, our strong international economic linkages, a tradition of political pluralism, independent trade unions, a free press, and the vigour of our NGO sector. Since then the country has won golden opinions for macroeconomic policy management, reflected most recently in a heavily oversubscribed 30-year government bond. Despite this, we now learn almost daily of things that prompt the question once again: are we headed for the list of African failures. Recently an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease occurred because a vital border fence with Mozambique had been neglected. Such problems are not isolated. We have slipped further down global tables as a destination for mining investment, police behaviour seems to be increasingly lawless, maternal and infant mortality rates are rising, millions of schoolchildren have started another year without textbooks, and the country's commercial capital is run by people who are out of their depth. We also have much higher rates of youth unemployment than countries to the north that recently chased away their rulers. Specific problems aside, among the main reasons we are going wrong are the following: •Affirmative action, which has denuded the State of both skills and institutional memory •Labour laws which protect unionised workers at the expense of the jobless •The cadre deployment policy, making loyalty to the party a key criterion for appointment to offices of state, and •Use of a model of government which makes elected institutions more accountable to party headquarters than to voters. Apart from policies and practices, the problems confronting us arise in part from assumptions and attitudes that affect the policy environment. These include: •limited understanding of what entrepreneurship requires •ideological hostility towards business •poor appreciation of how markets work or even antipathy towards them the belief that the pockets of our small number of major taxpayers are bottomless, and •too much faith in the efficacy of the State, leading to more and more regulation To these harmful factors must be added others: •corruption said by the deputy president to be "worse than anyone imagines" •lawlessness on the part of the State •a love of the grandiose, such as new bullet trains to Durban while we can't fix commuter rail services •the callousness towards ordinary people found all too often in service departments, and •no accountability even for preventable deaths of mothers and babies in public hospitals Then there are two key problems in the way policy is made. One is a habit of putting the cart before the horse - for example, embarking on ambitious education or health schemes without first fixing the basics such as training enough teachers and reversing the decline of public hospitals. The second is failure to apply the lessons of admitted mistakes. To its credit, the Government has admitted the failings of outcomes-based education but the ANC nevertheless plans to forge ahead with a national health system without considering the State's capacity constraints. These various aspects of our problems show that we are facing not just a few wrong-headed policies, but a challenge arising from the very nature of the Government and how it runs the State. Most of them have a direct impact on business. Part of that challenge arises from the fact that the ANC is not a normal political party. When a party with a two-thirds majority in Parliament is still committed to a "national democratic revolution," we must ask what it is that they wish to stage a revolution against. The economic system? Probably. Democracy? Perhaps. The rule of law? Very likely. The Constitution? Possibly. The Press pays little attention to the national democratic revolution, but the ANC is committed to it. This is one of the risks we face. Another is that tougher affirmative action requirements lead to a drain from the country of the most skilled segment of the population. Yet another is that public spending gets out of control as the ANC promises more free things to more people and puts more of them on to the public payroll, including now members of Umkhonto we Sizwe. We might also see a more rigid labour market, destructive interventions in agriculture, attenuation of property rights, damage to private health care, more malfeasance with mining licences, further corruption of the criminal justice system, and more local governments collapsing. It is ironical that we are expanding our social security commitments at the very moment when rich countries are having to cut back. It is also ironical that we are seeking to extend controls of the labour market while Europeans are trying to make their labour markets more flexible. A further piece of irony is that we are lengthening the arm of the State at the very time when China and India are continuing to liberalise economically, when parts of Africa are liberalising, and when even Cuba is showing signs of liberalisation. I have painted some dark clouds and the challenge now is to find the silver linings. Like a contrarian investor, we must look for signs of change that may not be obvious. One of these is the very fact that the Europeans, the Chinese, the Indians, and the Cubans have been here before and are having to reverse thrust. The international context in which we make policy has changed. Africa is also having to pay more attention to good governance than in the past. Already, some African countries are more attractive as mining destinations than we are. If we don't look out, we may find that our lead as the most important economy in Africa is shrinking. Despite the ANC's close historical ties with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was unable in 1994 to follow a communist path because the USSR had in the meantime imploded. As welfare and dirigiste states elsewhere come under pressure, so will the ANC have to recognise that those role models are also unworkable. Despite this country's achievements since the advent of democracy in 1994, we are pursuing an unworkable political model. This model will have to be abandoned just as communism and apartheid had to be abandoned. How long this will take I do not know. The evolution of liberal democracy can be a slow and difficult business. But we need to find ways of helping the process along, while also trying to minimise the fearful human and economic damage that may be done in the interim. Among the reasons why apartheid disintegrated, two are relevant today. One is that its contradictions - notably the belief that you could run a modern economy without exploiting the skills of the whole population and granting them political rights - became unsustainable. The second reason was that, as the policy crumbled under the weight of critical scrutiny and its own contradictions, the ruling elite began to lose faith in it. Disillusionment spread from the Dutch reformed churches, to the Afrikaans Press, to academia, to business, to the ruling party, to the Cabinet, and not least to the Broederbond. This made Mr FW de Klerk's bold actions on 2nd February 1990 both necessary and possible. Parallels between the last 25 years of National Party rule and the first 15 years of ANC rule are becoming quite striking. The most obvious is on racial policy. The NP thought it could run a successful economy without fully exploiting the skills of the black population. The ANC thinks it can run a successful state without fully exploiting the skills of the white population. The evidence that this cannot be done is apparent all the time at all levels and in all branches of government. And it is beginning to cause instability at local level and hurt the party. Unfortunately, however, one of the parallels with our past is that failed policies are sometimes intensified rather than abandoned. This happened with the pass laws, for example, before PW Botha finally repealed them in 1986. It may also happen now with the Employment Equity Act, with its provisions for heavier fines to enforce racial quotas upon all employers - when the Government cannot even get Denel, or Eskom, or SAA, or Transnet to meet its racial targets at management or skilled levels. But there are other parallels. Just as the National Party steadily lost support among the intelligentsia, the same is happening with the ANC. Some black newspaper editors and journalists are at least as critical of the ANC as their white counterparts. In discussions with black business leaders over the past few months, my Institute has been struck how some of them have become very critical of the government - more so than most of their white counterparts. Moeletsi Mbeki probably speaks for more people than we think. Some of the squabbles in the ruling tripartite alliance are about spoils and patronage, but others are about policy. There are divisions over whether "decent" jobs should be placed above the need to generate more jobs. A growing minority is beginning to question the deployment policy. Others would like to have a professional civil service instead of one subject to ministerial whim. Racial policies are now also becoming a source of division, as we saw last week with Trevor Manuel's public attack on Jimmy Manyi. This spat is causing the ANC to tie itself into knots. When my Institute pointed out that forcing employers in the Western Cape to conform to the national racial breakdown would necessitate the (illegal) dismissal of thousands of coloured workers, President Jacob Zuma said companies would have flexibility to conform to national or regional demographics. This, however, is not what the proposed amendment to the Employment Equity Act says. Now the general secretary of the ANC, Mr Gwede Mantashe, has weighed in to the effect that national companies will have to use national demographics and provincially-based companies provincial demographics. This is the opposite of the flexibility of which Mr Zuma speaks. In November last year the minister of finance, Mr Pravin Gordhan, told an audience in London that economic empowerment policies designed to improve the standard of living of the black majority after 1994 had not worked. After all the employment equity, labour, and land reform legislation, not to mention hundreds of billions of Rands in BEE deals, this is quite an admission. In the short term it may lead to an intensification of failed policies, but in the long term these policies will have to be abandoned. The new constitution ushered in democracy in 1994. Ironically, however, the ANC's model of government - based on the Leninist idea of "democratic centralism" - in terms of which party headquarters dictates to local communities whom they must elect - is causing growing dissatisfaction at local level as the municipal election on 18th May approaches. Though many officials are hostile to white farmers, others recognise that no one else has the expertise to reverse the failures of land reform. Despite antipathy to the private sector, some of the ruling elite see a growing role for it in getting our ports working more efficiently, in electricity generation, in the rescue of local government, in AIDS testing, and in sorting out the problems of further education and training colleges. Indeed, as the failings of the State become more and more apparent, thanks in part to a critical media, more and more people in government will turn to the private sector for help. Even Cosatu wants private sector involvement to be mobilised when Postbank gets a banking licence. These inconsistencies will multiply as the ANC continues to pursue mutually contradictory policies. Promises of creating millions of new jobs are incompatible with key components of official policy, among them affirmative action, the deployment strategy, restrictions on immigration, tightening up the labour market, and adding to the regulatory burden on business. Eventually the contradictions will become unsustainable. Either some of these key policies will have to be jettisoned, or the quest for millions more jobs will fall by the wayside. In the meantime, what do we do? The first thing is to keep exposing the contradictions, so providing arguments for those in the ruling alliance who wish to see more realistic policies. Arguments for the liberalisation of our damaging labour laws need to be refined and intensified. The climate to do this is now more favourable than at any time since 1994. I suspect that affirmative action and cadre deployment policies have also done more damage to this country than most people care to admit. Can you really run a modern industrial state if you would rather leave posts in the public sector vacant than appoint whites to them? The major victims of this folly have been blacks rather than whites. The connection between these policies and lost growth and investment, high unemployment, shoddy RDP houses, inability to obtain social grants or medicines, preventable maternal and infant deaths, high crime rates, perilous roads, poisonous rivers, mismanagement of flooded dams, fraudulent passports and IDs, and a great many other problems needs to be repeatedly pointed out. The ANC's economic objectives simply cannot be achieved while everything is subordinate to racial ideology and the imperatives of the "national democratic revolution". This message needs to be hammered home without reservation or apology until a critical mass of opinion within the ruling alliance comes to recognise it. Secondly, it is necessary to stand firm in the defence of vital practices and institutions as they come under increasing threat, not only the rule of law but also academic freedom, independent civil society, a free Press, an independent legal profession and prosecution service, and independent courts. It is also necessary that organisations other than business come to the public defence of the free market system, private enterprise, and entrepreneurship. Not for a second should anyone in the ruling alliance be allowed to forget that the money the Government spends on education, health, housing, child support grants, and everything else - including its lengthening list of promises to its constituents - arises from taxes extracted from the private sector and private individuals. This is a point that needs much more emphasis than it gets. Business might wish to think of ways of getting the point across more strongly in public as well as to parliamentarians, civil servants, and other members of the ruling alliance. Thirdly, keep proposing alternatives to present policies. Business may not necessarily see a direct role for itself here, but it is nevertheless essential that alternatives be put forward. Here is my list of a dozen: 1. Cut back on the size of the State 2. Put inspectors back into schools 3. Systematically extend private education 4. Radically redesign land reform 5. Democratise Parliament 6. Liberalise the labour market 7. Make economic growth rather than redistribution the topmost priority 8. Change our welfare state into one that promotes entrepreneurship 9. Direct all state interventions at helping the poorest of the poor regardless of race 10. Replace the deployment system with a professional civil service 11. Increase our global competitiveness as a destination for foreign direct investment 12. Repeal all racially discriminatory laws Some of these may seem fanciful right now. However, given growing contradictions, policy failures, and paralysis in government, the climate is in fact auspicious. Detailed policy work on alternatives will of course be necessary. But the main point at this stage is to undertake a tenacious campaign to change ideas, preparing the soil, as it were, for new policies to be planted. This will be a long haul and a hard slog, so the sooner it is stepped up the better. The ruling party must be a prime target, both direct and indirect. Don't forget that ideas predate policies and that their power, for good or ill, should never be underestimated. It was after all, that great incendiary journalist and armchair revolutionary, Karl Marx, who produced some of the most powerful ideas in history. Despite their murderous consequences some of these ideas still have an iron grip in South Africa. They need constantly to be countered by the ideas that underpin liberal democracy. In particular, we need to keep on propagating the idea that the real alternative to apartheid is not another form of social engineering designed to promote an impossible equality of outcomes but an open society committed to equality before the law, political and economic freedom, corruption-free and proper democratic government, and rising living standards for all. Social and racial engineers failed in South Africa last time around, and they will fail this time too. That is cause not for despair but for eager anticipation. - John Kane-Berman - CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations.

An open letter to SA’s leadership...

I will try to answer three questions; 1. Which way are we going? 2. Why? 3. Can we find a better way forward? Apart from racial policy, the ...

8:26 AM

Deployment: The ANC can't have its cake and eat it

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7OxW6aHrLszGyN9vIOZEN9GfxSjgQbV9Vx47vzbsDBnergqSLE1CgkUxGBuz9ALwDZj-y57TdDMvjXG4X4tvBpBgEG2H8PYFjPPm7QcsUGI2hLiSI0a_ngph6giou2SpCUfp6YHc_AbI/s1600-h/ANC-Govern.bmp"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397573392442658482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7OxW6aHrLszGyN9vIOZEN9GfxSjgQbV9Vx47vzbsDBnergqSLE1CgkUxGBuz9ALwDZj-y57TdDMvjXG4X4tvBpBgEG2H8PYFjPPm7QcsUGI2hLiSI0a_ngph6giou2SpCUfp6YHc_AbI/s400/ANC-Govern.bmp" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 272px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" /></a>Paul Trewhela responds to Malusi Gigaba's analysis of the state of local govt THE SUBSTITUTIONISM OF THE ANC Earlier this week, in 'The Professor and the Police Minister', I developed a grim argument that despotism is an old tradition in South Africa, and that the current administration appeared to be moving in that direction (see <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=148248&sn=Detail">here</a>).. I neglected to add a rider to that proposition. The rider says: True, but South Africa is a very difficult country to govern despotically, without the consent of the governed. Let the governors take a warning from the history of their predecessors. Few countries in the world have such a rich tradition of resistance against unjust and arbitrary rule. In few countries is there such a deep and grounded assumption, with such a powerful lived experience among the present generations, that 'these truths we take to be self-evident': that government exists to serve the governed, and not the other way round. It is not wise in South Africa for government to believe that it has a God-appointed, or History-appointed, right to rule. Unfortunately for government, the people have a very long experience of being instructed in the nonsense of that fable, which they learned the hard way not to believe, through many sacrifices. Their greatest heroes refused that argument, and stated instead: 'It's right to rebel.' At the age of 91, born in 1918, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is living proof of that grand refusal. The fact that he stepped down voluntarily from the seat of power, after only one term in office, is also proof of it. It is not wise for the governors in South Africa to exempt themselves from that model, provided so richly over so many years by a Mandela, a Biko, a Luthuli, a Sobukwe...the names go on and on. Each and any despotic action by the government of South Africa will be held up for inspection in the mirror of that history, which is not dead: it is not even past (as the novelist William Faulkner liked to say about the past). Few countries live so much in the present of such a history. If a people are instructed constantly in a historical tradition of defiance of unjust rule, as in South Africa, it would be unwise to assume that they will not continue to honour that teaching. If the first article in the most honoured document of that tradition were to state that 'The people shall govern', and that 'All people are entitled to take part in the administration of the country', then it would be wise to expect that the people would in the course of time come to know if they were not, in fact, being permitted to govern themselves, or if some other agency had arrogated to itself the right to act as surrogate, or substitute, in their proper place. No, ruling by fooling has only a limited chance of succeeding in a country with this kind of history. It can succeed for a while. But then, bit by bit, people catch on. About political dispossession, South Africans are a learned people. Their government should beware that kind of knowledge becoming widely established. In this sense, the people are wiser than their government, and they live much longer - above all in their historical memory. It is so easy to see who acts as Baas in this country. This is the significance of the extraordinary statement by Malusi Gigaba, Deputy Minister of Housing and member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, which appeared last week on the weekly online newsletter of the governing party, ANC Today 23 October (see <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=148245&sn=Detail">here</a>). Gigaba's document is revelatory for two reasons. Firstly, he provides an astonishing insider's accountancy of cronyism and corruption by the governing party, and how it eviscerates local government across a huge area of the country. Secondly, despite all he shows of maladministration and corruption, he reveals an unshaken faith in the sacred right of his political party to continue to act as a substitute source of authority, in place of the voters. Gigaba begins in his first sentence with an acknowledgement of a primary contemporary reality: "It is quite easy to hear such swiping statements as that - 'All Councillors are useless and corrupt'". The problem arises, he states, "when nothing is done about those that are corrupt, or arrogant, and/or lazy". Some of the current service delivery protests, Gigaba continues, have been not so much about service delivery itself, but, rather, "service delivery issues have been raised to highlight a much deeper challenge in our municipalities which relates to the political leadership of the Councils." The recent Lekwa municipal protests had little to do with the issues of service delivery, he states. They were directed rather at "the arrogance of certain comrades deployed to positions of responsibility...." What the community is complaining about was basically that "their leadership had turned their backs on their mandate and had forgotten their leadership responsibility". Councillors at the level of municipality, he goes on, sometimes "become big-headed and undermine and disrespect" ANC branches, so that "the only structure they interact with is their caucus". In addition, there are "constant divisions between the ANC and its allies. There are many opportunists on the ground masquerading as SACP members, sowing divisions in the name of the SACP and even orchestrating violent riots against Councillors. In many instances, it is an open secret that these so-called SACP activists want to become Councillors themselves in 2011, and just use the SACP for that purpose. This is not helped by the ANC's own ample opportunists sowing divisions of their own between the ANC and SACP." ANC branches, Gigaba continues, "regard themselves as representatives of the leadership in the community rather than as representatives of communities..." Branches feel that this "precludes the ANC from engaging in what are regarded as civic issues", thus "[refraining] from civic engagement about roads, electricity, water and housing, indeed about issues of municipal governance...". In a situation in which the "ordinary masses on the ground had enormous grievances and discontent about local issues", in Lekwa the recent protests had in fact been "led by ANC members in good standing". ANC branches in Lekwa had previously "raised these issues to senior organisational structures, but with no positive response." The result is "Social distance - a leadership disconnect[ed] with communities": a "yawning political, organisational and leadership hiatus on the ground", in which for years it had been "evident that the masses felt estranged and disengaged from the ANC and regarded its leadership as aloof." This was "Deployment gone berserk". In Lekwa, Dipaleseng and other areas, the political leaders of the municipalities "disrespect the masses and have tended to regard themselves...as untouchable. What often compounds this is the fact that these comrades often have connections with senior leaders in the regions and provinces and belong to powerful factions that protect them and shield them from any criticism." Mayors, Speakers and Chief Whips are often "clearly incompetent to occupy these positions. Yet they have been deployed to hold them...to serve factional ends. When they buckle and fail to perform, and when they become arrogant and big-headed, it is because they know they will be shielded by those that had deployed them". There, without even having to read between the lines, and from the hand of the Deputy Housing Minister (who is also a former President of the ANC Youth League, and therefore knows the score backwards), is the rarest glimpse of truth from within the ruling apparatus. Gigaba describes a pervasive system in which councillors (though not all) are "corrupt, or arrogant, and/or lazy", who "turn their backs" on the people they are supposed to serve, who are "big-headed" and interact only with their caucus, among whom there are "ample opportunists" and in which there are "constant divisions" of a purely factional, self-serving nature. What an indictment, and what a betrayal of the ANC's promise that 'The people shall govern'! It is an exposition of the systemic nature of South Africa's failure of governance. Gigaba goes even further. In a dazzling illumination of the real nature of modern South Africa which deserves to be re-enacted in municipalities across the country as a form of political theatre, for the enlightenment and entertainment of the people, he displays the systemic machinery of corruption in government. The "greatest injustice", he states, is committed "when patently incompetent and unqualified people are deployed into the administration as Municipal Managers, Chief Financial Officers, and Heads of certain services such as local economic development, technical services and others." Then comes the clincher. "It is generally known that Section 57 Employees are political deployees. The reasons for this are never explained except that this is so. This is so helplessly abused and perverted that it could seem that what is at fault here is the very notion of deployment. Anyone who is connected with the powerful blocs can end up occupying any of these positions. "Often, RECs deploy people to these positions despite the fact that they have no deployment committees and have no power to deploy. And when they do so, they often deploy 'javelin throwers' who will ensure that all contracts are thrown in the right direction and then they run hard to receive the javelin on the other hand and share the spoils with those who 'deployed' them." "Javelin throwers"! What a wonderful phrase! What is at fault here, Gigaba affirms, "is the very notion of deployment". He concludes by stating that "atrocities are committed in the name of deployment and municipalities undermined and decapitated!" He could not be more damning. Yet, contrary to Malusi Gigaba, "deployment" is the heart and soul of ANC government, its principle of life, its fundamental principle of rule. It is built into the very fabric of government by the Electoral Law enshrined in the Constitution of 1994, by which a party list system of unmediated proportional representation places a cabal of party managers in Luthuli House supreme over Parliament, the provinces, the municipalities, the civil service - and even the Presidency itself - with as little difference as if it were the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The "javellin throwers" are the living truth of South African despotism, built into the Constitution by the ANC in its Electoral Law under the benign aegis of Nelson Mandela, in a last-minute secret compact with the outgoing party of despotism, the National Party of FW de Klerk (and before him, of PW Botha, BJ Vorster, etc etc), in the early months of 1994. It is the continuation of apartheid tyranny by other means, to the advantage of the ANC, as successor to the apartheid state. Even a cursory reading of Gigaba's historic document makes it clear, however, that he sees no remedy to this systemic miscarriage of democracy in South Africa, apart from an appeal to the nobler sentiments of the party for whom this system was constructed as sole beneficiary. Gigaba is a prisoner too of the ANC's folie de grandeur, or arrogance (or foolishness) of power. It is the besetting sin of substitutionism. This term, current within British leftwing groups in previous decades, was invented to describe those deluded groups or sects that believed that they could substitute their own energies (or arrogance) for the self-activity of the working class. It applies perfectly to the arrogant delusion of the ANC, of whatever faction (and no less to the direct inheritor of the Stalinist tradition of the Soviet Union, the SACP, burrowed away within the ANC), that it is the God-created fount of the political right to rule in South Africa, and not the voters organised in constituencies, with the power to pull down any incumbent. In this sense, the Constitution of 1994 through its Electoral Law established a tyranny dressed up as democracy, and this system urgently needs revision. Discussion of this subject should be brought to every municipality in the country.

Deployment: The ANC can't have its cake and eat it

Paul Trewhela responds to Malusi Gigaba's analysis of the state of local govt THE SUBSTITUTIONISM OF THE ANC Earlier this week, in '...

1:45 AM

Spooks haunt our democracy

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTyXj3JY4cRaMjkTJnmvoAepfK2LiBOYuZ4214lnk1mbhFqsYi40RSOJF-XxWmRXF65xLkltMtqtKBNjInwK9TjVB8qBSv3lclt7eFJPBN3hgVdmxUDdNQUotubqyz6mkZjpYaeryX-H3s/s1600-h/zuma-malema-me.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338622424059461810" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTyXj3JY4cRaMjkTJnmvoAepfK2LiBOYuZ4214lnk1mbhFqsYi40RSOJF-XxWmRXF65xLkltMtqtKBNjInwK9TjVB8qBSv3lclt7eFJPBN3hgVdmxUDdNQUotubqyz6mkZjpYaeryX-H3s/s400/zuma-malema-me.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 299px" /></a>Nothing demonstrates the power of secret information more starkly than the withdrawal of corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma. The leaking of intercepted communications of Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy revealed how partisan to Thabo Mbeki’s cause he had become and gave the National Prosecuting Authority a reason to abandon the case against Zuma. But the revelation of the McCarthy intercepts, showing that the intelligence services effectively spied on their own president, are merely the most blatant manifestation of the pervasive influence of spies on our politics. The issue of who is more guilty of abusing the security services is still a matter of fierce contestation. That much is clear from our ground-breaking interviews with former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils and the man he sacked, former National Intelligence Agency (NIA) boss Billy Masetlha. They were two of the most important protagonists in the secret (and not so secret) war that had gripped the nation ever since then national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka and his Scorpions became both a vehicle of and a target in the battle between the Mbeki and Zuma factions of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). The clouds had already gathered around the Hefer Commission in late 2003 -- a piece of political theatre supposed to vindicate Ngcuka and humiliate those accusing him of having been an apartheid spy -- Mac Maharaj and Moe Shaik. Instead the commission exposed the political impact of spies and spying as well as the way our security services might be abused despite their constitutional fig leaf. After the 2004 election Mbeki conducted a mini-purge of the security services. Out went intelligence minister Lindiwe Sisulu, in came Kasrils. Out went NIA director general Vusi Mavimbela, in came someone perceived as a reliable Mbeki loyalist: Masetlha — a remarkable error of judgement. By August 2005 Masetlha was deeply embroiled in the “hoax email” saga. The emails were a bizarre concoction of fact and fantastic misinformation for which Masetlha still disowns responsibility. They purported to be intercepts of communications among Mbeki’s most prominent backers -- businessman Saki Macozoma, Kasrils, then deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and her husband Bulelani -- involving themselves with the Scorpions in an anti-Zuma plot. By October 19 2005 Masetlha had made an official report to Mbeki, providing the president with the “real” evidence about the anti-Zuma conspiracy. Masetlha was suspended the next day and later dismissed, after an investigation by the inspector general of intelligence accused him of misusing his powers to launch a politically motivated intelligence operation. The so-called Zuma tapes have been leaked and provide some backing for Masetlha’s version. Both Kasrils and Masetlha claim to have acted in the national interest. Each, in effect, accuses the other of serious misuse of the security architecture to promote narrow and illegitimate political and financial interests. Both men reveal events and attitudes that should cause concern. Kasrils’s admission that he vigorously engaged with McCarthy over the timing of the decision to recharge Zuma will add to perceptions of the political management of the whole case. Masetlha’s emphasis on the re-purification of the ANC as an antidote to the seductions of power appears naïve at best. Untangling the truth about the abuses of core state institutions is vital, because this saga has struck at the foundations of our constitutional order. We have allegations of the manufacture of evidence; the influencing of and the spying on judges; the suborning of the national interest by foreign intelligence services. Closer to home, it appears that journalists on this newspaper have been the targets of dirty tricks — simply because they were doing their jobs by investigating corruption and abuses of power. Getting to the truth is all the more important because the architecture of spying is more powerful than ever. Given the experience of the last few years one might expect policy-makers to be thinking about curbs on the intelligence agencies. Instead we now have a Ministry of State Security, we have a new Leonard McCarthy in the shape of Anwa Dramat — and key ANC strategists are saying that our national levels of lawlessness demand greater security encroachment, not less. The temptation will be for the victors in these spy wars to simply appropriate for their own ends the tools supposedly abused by their predecessors. One former senior intelligence official told the Mail & Guardian this week: “Intelligence is juicy to know; it’s addictive, it feeds the ego of the client. If that client has an addictive personality, then you’re doomed.” It seems clear that this is a national addiction, thriving as much in the Zuma camp as it did under Mbeki.

Spooks haunt our democracy

Nothing demonstrates the power of secret information more starkly than the withdrawal of corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma. Th...

5:04 AM

Zuma's new 34-member Cabinet a shambles

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr3Cgln3IIGlcHraoE_3qHajiT92kiDr4fNiI7zqaMD2RmX-Qcuw5ma3cAabg9_8E37EtbsWLPL3KcgXrUPp9gO8YIMTPLH71noKftT-KX51bqoHY0pCPp9qPjAXG0EyLR8-a7eHO2Q4Bz/s1600-h/zuma_themba_hadebe_ap.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5336085740653830882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr3Cgln3IIGlcHraoE_3qHajiT92kiDr4fNiI7zqaMD2RmX-Qcuw5ma3cAabg9_8E37EtbsWLPL3KcgXrUPp9gO8YIMTPLH71noKftT-KX51bqoHY0pCPp9qPjAXG0EyLR8-a7eHO2Q4Bz/s320/zuma_themba_hadebe_ap.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" /></a>Jacob Zuma’s new cabinet is poorly structured and conceived. It will compromise the ability of the government to produce and implement coherent policy, particularly on the economic front. It will compromise accountability of individual ministers, undermine their authority, and vest an inappropriate monitoring and evaluation role in the government. At the same time it appears as if it took Jacob Zuma less than 24 hours to abdicate most of his presidential responsibilities onto Trevor Manuel. All of the above is wholly at odds with initial media and public reaction to the announcement of the Zuma cabinet. A number of business groups, civil society organizations, newspapers - including business papers that should know better, and even opposition parties where full of praise for the new cabinet. One opposition party was so impressed with the new arrangement that it even found itself playing a senior role in that cabinet. But the new cabinet is a shambles and this is why: There are too many portfolios each tasked with economic policy making. The ministers of finance, planning, economic development, and trade and industry will each have a direct hand in formulating economic policy. Two of these ministries, economic development and trade and industry, are headed by individuals with strong trade union or communist party sympathies. The other two, finance and planning, are headed by individuals with an arguably more pragmatic economic outlook. Even if open policy conflict is avoided it is difficult to see how a paralysis of policy will not result within government. This is particularly so when you consider that the ministers of mining, energy, public enterprises, labour, and public works also have a direct hand in economic policy making. The chance of meaningful implementation of coherent economic policy is limited. It will be extremely difficult to hold individual ministers accountable for their performance. Take just the example of employment targets. If these are not met any one of eight ministers could be held accountable. The most likely result is that no-one will be held accountable as each ministry will simply pass the responsibility onto the next one. While such an arrangement may suit politicians it will compromise government’s ability to implement policy and is a very unsatisfactory outcome. In order to avoid the shambles of policy paralysis warned of above, Trevor Manuel appears to have been handed the task of coordinating policy formulation across all ministries and tiers of government. But it is a problematic appointment because the responsibility to coordinate policy across cabinet portfolios is that of the President. It therefore appears as if Jacob Zuma has abdicated much of his presidential responsibility within the first 24-hours of his presidency. While Trevor Manuel has the competence to fulfill his new role it remains to be seen whether he has been granted the authority within the cabinet to overrule the policy work of his colleagues. If he is granted that authority the cabinet will be a hierarchy of ministers. Those at the bottom of the pile will effectively have their authority undermined. That will in turn undermine the whole concept of having cabinet ministers in the first place. If a minister will be required to in effect report to a senior minister then his or her portfolio should originally have been incorporated into the senior minister’s portfolio. The saving in terms of money but also efficiency and adequate accountability would have been substantial. The role of assessing the performance of the cabinet must be played by Parliament not by the new ministry of performance and assessment. Traditionally Parliament has not done this to the extent that it should have because opposition parties were too small and the ANC in Parliament was not interested in doing so. We are therefore faced with the extraordinary situation where much of the responsibility for holding the government to account has been handed to that same government through a structure conceived by that government. This is not a positive development and again bodes ill for ensuring the most effective implementation of policy and therefore delivery by the government. Considering the challenges faced by the new government it is unfortunate that they have employed such a cumbersome structure to meet those challenges. This is particularly so considering that a number of highly competent individuals have taken senior cabinet posts. One hopes that their talents are not squandered by the environment they are now expected to work in. It would have been more desirable to have a smaller cabinet composed of no more that 15 to 20 ministries with clearly defined portfolios. Cabinet ministers would then have clear authority for policy making within their portfolios and could easily be held to account by Parliament. The President would carry the responsibility for policy implementation and coordination which is the role his office is tasked with. - Frans Cronje

Zuma's new 34-member Cabinet a shambles

Jacob Zuma’s new cabinet is poorly structured and conceived. It will compromise the ability of the government to produce and implement coher...

5:17 AM

Youth League accuses DA leader of sleeping around with Western Cape provincial cabinet

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4drcwphyphenhyphengaly0j3JUBUpIsDkPfgF9hpkZGMKtYQCL6mESntr6AXewO77mluCllvADPvFBxHLyZmRg30vpRbOB3BPTX4EYHoA9Ut31POSeU14d3flortXgYIMqfEaUxVboMbR7JNRvvXx7/s1600-h/zumazillehugeya5.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335043909402461810" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4drcwphyphenhyphengaly0j3JUBUpIsDkPfgF9hpkZGMKtYQCL6mESntr6AXewO77mluCllvADPvFBxHLyZmRg30vpRbOB3BPTX4EYHoA9Ut31POSeU14d3flortXgYIMqfEaUxVboMbR7JNRvvXx7/s320/zumazillehugeya5.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 221px" /></a>SOUTH Africa’s public discourse has descended into the swamp of ad-hominem attacks as the DA’s Helen Zille accused Zuma of endangering his wives with his promiscuous behaviour and ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe said she was now an “enemy”. The speed with which the national debate has soured was remarkable. In the morning, <a class="tenred" href="http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=998199">The Sowetan</a> newspaper ran a front page story quoting Zille as saying: “Zuma is a self-confessed womaniser with deeply sexist views, who put all his wives at risk by having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman”. <a href="http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=997557">Zuma an AIDS risk - Zille </a> She went on to say that the ANC’s “professions of support for women’s rights ring hollow indeed against this background”. <a href="http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=998199">Here is Helen Zille’s statement </a><a href="http://www.sowetan.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=997557"></a> By the afternoon, it had all turned very sour with the ANC Youth League reaching for the strongest language it could find. It said in a statement that it was “disgusted by remarks attributed to the racist girl Helen Zille, who when failing to defend her stupid and sexist decision to appoint predominantly white males into her cabinet, attacks the President of the Republic of South Africa (sic)”. It went on: “Zille has appointed an all male cabinet of useless people, majority of whom are her boyfriends and concubines so that she can continue to sleep around with them, yet she claims to have the moral authority to question our President (sic).” Then came Mantashe’s response, signalling that Zuma’s brief campaign to reach out was over. That he went so far as to describe Zille as “an enemy” bodes ill for our political life. ANCYL threatens "militant action" against Zille <a href="http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/Politics/0,,2-7-12_2515312,00.html">Storm rages around Zille</a> Threats of "militant action", insults and recriminations with a sexual undertone fly about Helen Zille. <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/">www.politicsweb.co.za</a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBA6yFdKNZ-j9zPAfp3TKTDGiJBc3bEJw98Yl_ePDIzQA8-c_uTBMq4CeNx9DNaaLst8O2WFSqrxx2sIEl2fv7u65fzRx58vJNI2DA0QnpqxAN6GRwXzpKkK6w44law1LUZrKyoU_7-GkQ/s1600-h/SowetanZille.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335025108484522338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBA6yFdKNZ-j9zPAfp3TKTDGiJBc3bEJw98Yl_ePDIzQA8-c_uTBMq4CeNx9DNaaLst8O2WFSqrxx2sIEl2fv7u65fzRx58vJNI2DA0QnpqxAN6GRwXzpKkK6w44law1LUZrKyoU_7-GkQ/s400/SowetanZille.png" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 140px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" /></a>HELEN ZILLE CONTNUES TO EXCEL AS NUMBER ONE RACIST AND DESTRACTOR OF GENDER STRUGGLES: The ANCYL is disgusted by remarks attributed to the racist girl Helen Zille, who when failing to defend her stupid and sexist decision to appoint predominantly white males into her cabinet, attacks the President of the Republic of South Africa. The ANC YL calls on Helen Zille to respect the office of the President of the Republic of South Africa and stop making <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=128502&sn=Detail">stupid and degrading remarks</a> against President Jacob Zuma. Zille has appointed an all male cabinet of useless people, majority of whom are her boyfriends and concubines so that she can continue to sleep around with them, yet she claims to have the moral authority to question our President. If the fake racist girl Zille continues to speak hogwash like she has been doing during elections, we will take militant action against her, and demonstrate to her that she does not have monopoly over the Western Cape. The fake racist girl who was dropped on her head as a child should understand that South Africa will never be a Mickey-mouse Republic like she wants to portray it. An absolute majority of South Africans support President Jacob Zuma and will find it very disgusting for a fake racist apartheid agent to continue undermining the highest office in South Africa. Statement issued by the ANC <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/youth">Youth League</a>, May 12 2009

Youth League accuses DA leader of sleeping around with Western Cape provincial cabinet

SOUTH Africa’s public discourse has descended into the swamp of ad-hominem attacks as the DA’s Helen Zille accused Zuma of endangering his w...

12:22 PM

Zuma's new Cabinet to cost R1-billion extra

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib3S0pGqne17OL2J1Ug9watmjc4ekum3X4XHy5eYbPWnJVQPsEZHb-NVCK3YFhIQmWsTj3VdOWRGru73cfS79CwRwh-lbOIF6QARudmoiK6P-FwtRYuReU8tE1QrKHCLsTB2TePFaDS4G4/s1600-h/zuma-anc01.bmp"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334866896772735090" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib3S0pGqne17OL2J1Ug9watmjc4ekum3X4XHy5eYbPWnJVQPsEZHb-NVCK3YFhIQmWsTj3VdOWRGru73cfS79CwRwh-lbOIF6QARudmoiK6P-FwtRYuReU8tE1QrKHCLsTB2TePFaDS4G4/s400/zuma-anc01.bmp" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 266px" /></a>President Jacob Zuma's new expanded Cabinet may cost the public nearly R1-billion, the Star newspaper reported on Tuesday. On Sunday, Zuma announced his Cabinet which created six new ministries. The Star, using the Treasury's annual estimates for national expenditure for 2009, said the smallest ministries cost more than R300-million each. At even half of that cost, the new ministries would still cost R900-million. The new Cabinet has created positions for six new ministers and eight deputy ministers. The paper reported that their salaries alone are estimated to cost R20,3-million. The education ministry and minerals and energy ministry were both split in two. The environmental affairs and tourism ministry was split, with the former being incorporated into water affairs and forestry. Tourism was given its own portfolio. Two new ministries were created, namely economic development and women, youth, children and people with disability. A new minister in the Presidency was created to be staffed by former finance minister Trevor Manuel who will be part of a newly established National Planning Commission. National Treasury spokesperson Thoraya Pandy was reported as saying the new costs were not yet known but that planning has started to budget for them. Pandy said most of the new costs would be for accommodation, staff and salaries. "At the moment we don't know what size the ministries will be," she was quoted as saying. Zuma, who campaigned hard on a pro-poor platform promising change and a renewed focus on service delivery warned civil servants that "the era of hard work has begun". "We reiterate that we will not tolerate laziness and incompetence and that we will emphasise excellence and achievement from the Cabinet and the public service," he said. "With these objectives in mind, I am confident that the new structures of government will enable the state machinery to speed up service delivery," he said of his new Cabinet, inflated to 34 ministers and 28 deputy ministers.

Zuma's new Cabinet to cost R1-billion extra

President Jacob Zuma's new expanded Cabinet may cost the public nearly R1-billion, the Star newspaper reported on Tuesday. On Sunday, Zu...

2:07 AM

Going wrong

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGq0VCCzAuTgr1TweIVsT73PHXrMtGwpOFzFpZUXvdCqyrBvdoE9-JEOVtPCJksq1dv2AyR137lAt-5Lh2C30DmBg95sDAA_ItGN6r0KxkNhXhKPh7QGJnyJDzVa9DpfHGa8zinLwub239/s1600-h/mandela_afpgetty.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334792320429108850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGq0VCCzAuTgr1TweIVsT73PHXrMtGwpOFzFpZUXvdCqyrBvdoE9-JEOVtPCJksq1dv2AyR137lAt-5Lh2C30DmBg95sDAA_ItGN6r0KxkNhXhKPh7QGJnyJDzVa9DpfHGa8zinLwub239/s400/mandela_afpgetty.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 293px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" /></a>Three books map, with varying degrees of anger and disappointment, the path chosen by the recent leaders of post-apartheid South Africa. FOR those who hoped that the rainbow nation emerging miraculously from the ashes of apartheid would bed down into a pluralistic and genuinely multiracial democracy, this trio of books provides a painful dose of disappointing scepticism. All three deem South Africa’s second post-apartheid president, Thabo Mbeki, a colossal failure. All, with differing degrees of certainty, consider Jacob Zuma, to be unworthy of the post. All of them, 15 years after Nelson Mandela led the country into its new era, bemoan the course it has taken. Yet they vary strikingly in tone. The angriest and most ambitious is the weighty tome of R.W. Johnson, a South Africa-born former adherent of the radical left who taught politics at Oxford for some 20 years before returning to his country to head the Helen Suzman Foundation, a liberal think-tank. His book is a relentless and pulverising polemic against the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and virtually all of its leading lights. Even Mr Mandela is scolded for “making poor use of his immense authority” and for “presiding over many blunders and lost opportunities”. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcBihMZW5MzQ1zb70xN4lBo6kT0HaiHPrLzzQaYJLzZ2pKDYLdga8cshacUdnzvgOhPtHy_Hi_Res0O5DFpyUq31lfI4eEjWe5Yvt3-jn842kCBiotIPIaRThfsNQyLBzcF-42Fq8TpaS0/s1600-h/anc-south-africa-story.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334752123700475890" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcBihMZW5MzQ1zb70xN4lBo6kT0HaiHPrLzzQaYJLzZ2pKDYLdga8cshacUdnzvgOhPtHy_Hi_Res0O5DFpyUq31lfI4eEjWe5Yvt3-jn842kCBiotIPIaRThfsNQyLBzcF-42Fq8TpaS0/s400/anc-south-africa-story.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 220px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 293px" /></a>The ANC, in Mr Johnson’s view, has become a nest of racists, thieves and hypocrites, who have done almost no good at all since they won power in 1994. Mr Mbeki is accused of “reracialising” South African politics, and the author supports this charge with a stack of evidence. According to Mr Johnson, the corruption which now permeates the party was most patent in the activities of its first minister of defence, the late Joe Modise, who is described as a big-time gangster. But most of the ANC’s lesser figures are accused of a host of venal sins too. A rapid conflation of party and state has led to the withering of independent institutions, a charge also levied by the authors of the other two books reviewed here. Mr Johnson hurls particular vitriol at the policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). As he describes it, this has merely enabled an ANC-connected elite to enrich itself fabulously in the name of affirmative action officially meant to tip more of the economy into black hands. He lists in remorseless detail a web of ties between ANC leaders and their families and the new rich and powerful. In Mr Johnson’s eyes, the ANC’s crude efforts to replace whites with its black supporters across the board has harmed the health service, served to “debase the entire educational system” and generally helped the black masses not a whit. “It is difficult”, he writes, “to find a minister—apart from Trevor Manuel at finance—who did not preside over a steep fall in standards.” Like the other two authors, Mr Johnson blames Mr Mbeki’s denial of links between HIV and AIDS for causing several hundred thousand unnecessary deaths. Similarly, Mr Mbeki is condemned for failing to squeeze Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe out of power. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPABufOFZ0Nmxwtdq7eCKdu3zAhSebQF-tgbJsl_aEry7K3FVATRcvjYiR7ZBrHQ1wkGqdbPz8zwj3Ib0q9vZhyphenhyphen-TfD6tPOrN4MH1mKeLUX7K9CV_Ckll3RvOIcUVNWHeRrJpyJZLnQt_W/s1600-h/anc-and-south-africas-uncertain-future.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334752125669624706" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPABufOFZ0Nmxwtdq7eCKdu3zAhSebQF-tgbJsl_aEry7K3FVATRcvjYiR7ZBrHQ1wkGqdbPz8zwj3Ib0q9vZhyphenhyphen-TfD6tPOrN4MH1mKeLUX7K9CV_Ckll3RvOIcUVNWHeRrJpyJZLnQt_W/s400/anc-and-south-africas-uncertain-future.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 293px" /></a>Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC member of parliament who headed a public accounts committee that required him to investigate a bunch of big arms deals, focuses mainly on corruption, both grand and petty. With wrenching anger and painstaking care, his book describes how graft has infected the new establishment. Many of the most respected figures of the liberation struggle placed loyalty to party above their responsibility to be honest with the people who had elected them. Mr Mbeki is again the chief villain, trampling on Parliament while manipulating and browbeating the party in his quest for personal power. His time in office was “a tragic failure defined by AIDS denial, catastrophe in Zimbabwe, widening inequality, persistent violent crime and growing corruption.” The ANC has “plummeted into a moral abyss…corruption is in the process of destroying [it].” The should-be-independent institutions of democracy “diminished” by Mr Mbeki include “the prosecutorial authority, the office of the auditor-general, investigative bodies, the intelligence agencies, the medicines control council, the medical research council, the human rights commission, the public broadcaster” and various others. Mr Feinstein’s account is sadder than Mr Johnson’s, because it starts from a position of hope and idealism that is painfully whittled away. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDSwmzAarojomUl9DDwnvMJyicbjqNYtlhjC6fV93yj-i_TZHezqRfoZ3cDzzyTcoTDmP5DY5uNRcyXjMhE4iNgGMNd3saz6PBeW0Hzmjae6qwcY-dgiotjlHHw5Xn1M6sGd_b-NytcEWg/s1600-h/anc-Bring+ME+My+Machine+Gun+The+Battle+for+the+Soul+of+SA+from+Mandela+to+Zuma.jpg"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRKfguDpVGfOPFaXEInfW1ay1HMQ-497M9tMm9RiubGk7lUMEODrB1CgPLKD1sSYSTauOy0aa9w1WJlp7-zZnBfhKE8RxQcKI2LlGxciP5loG7xai99zkZw0vxt8xjNqk-YbsYNgvTjY5w/s1600-h/and-_after-mandelastory.jpg"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwjB8ilMMdYEZdYe9Bb4dZ3_dWuBUD3b7awjwC-8HMgxtdNggwZqPOwcuPvGn2kZgI6sWrs-zsvNRTJ1sIdyFj2oDsJU5yQw2HqW3nWFcVtaXIRchvwJd49iWETwarkr0UyGg7Gnz2I2pA/s1600-h/anc-sa-book-bring-me-my-machine-gun.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334791848769408466" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwjB8ilMMdYEZdYe9Bb4dZ3_dWuBUD3b7awjwC-8HMgxtdNggwZqPOwcuPvGn2kZgI6sWrs-zsvNRTJ1sIdyFj2oDsJU5yQw2HqW3nWFcVtaXIRchvwJd49iWETwarkr0UyGg7Gnz2I2pA/s400/anc-sa-book-bring-me-my-machine-gun.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 304px" /></a>It is a relief to view South Africa’s past two decades through Alec Russell’s gentler, insightful, sometimes humorous, sometimes bleak, but always kaleidoscopic prism. He robustly addresses the same doleful issues of governance as the other two. It would have been better, he writes, if both Mr Mbeki and Mr Zuma had stepped aside to let a new man take the presidency next month. But his portrait of South Africa, alive with delicious vignettes across a range of humanity, is more nuanced—and more readable—than those of his two counterparts. Perhaps, as an outsider (who now edits world news for the Financial Times in London) he could more easily step back, after two stints as a correspondent in Johannesburg, and still enjoy the beloved country in all its contradictions. Mr Feinstein, a persona too honest to be grata with the ANC, now lives in London too. As for Mr Johnson, it will be a test of Mr Zuma’s expected presidency whether he remains free to hurl his angry brickbats at all and sundry. See book reviews:-<a class="l" href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5164391/South-Africas-Brave-New-World-by-RW-Johnson-and-A-Legacy-of-Liberation-by-Mark-Gevisser-review.html" onmousedown="return clk(this.href,'','','res','2','&sig2=vJU5RE07J5TMhqhY7nCU_A')">South Africa's Brave New World by RW Johnson and A Legacy of ...</a> <a class="l" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/after-the-party-corruption-and--the-anc-by-andrew-feinstein-1680664.html" onmousedown="return clk(this.href,'','','res','9','&sig2=0Yn4B8hAy7VlCSc73nctUQ')">After the Party: corruption and the ANC, By Andrew Feinstein ...</a> <a class="l" href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/89643312-1fe1-11de-a1df-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=383a6e06-2429-11de-9a01-00144feabdc0.html" onmousedown="return clk(this.href,'','','res','24','&sig2=rULIAwhD7HIQoR5kANakCw')">FT.com / In depth - After Mandela</a>

Going wrong

Three books map, with varying degrees of anger and disappointment, the path chosen by the recent leaders of post-apartheid South Africa. FOR...

12:21 PM

What your Vote's going to get you in today's Elections.

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjy0avYPLauRHkgG1CgZvvPDTm1UNS2s1jucS0Z519tNbnd9UJ0irwCcgaiP8WcYMo6t6-KTEyp8aOlB6zwrtVWYHfHXOLGU4ON_KEeJCh1C8ur5HX3_2H4QkFo4uwxb4zqmb6J62lZQf/s1600-h/elections-vote.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327429413063938386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjy0avYPLauRHkgG1CgZvvPDTm1UNS2s1jucS0Z519tNbnd9UJ0irwCcgaiP8WcYMo6t6-KTEyp8aOlB6zwrtVWYHfHXOLGU4ON_KEeJCh1C8ur5HX3_2H4QkFo4uwxb4zqmb6J62lZQf/s400/elections-vote.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 300px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" /></a>As a voter you should go through all the party manifestos before making an informed decision about which party best suits your needs… but that would be so boring! Besides, who really has the time? All you need to know: the good, the bad and what your vote's going to get you in today's elections.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUD5zqgxzyd_2u-Ru7t2ZDJGL6OpQsJqh69A4OmauX0BINbKEsgEnh7uoam-04GXS1U5B_c9Y1_gSV_aFa29yxiMwcDvidqoSPNKlf50MFRl0TTIhUO6OEGk5s_9o0mkhr6sgEkOpvv2Ku/s1600-h/PartyANC.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327995596308393554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUD5zqgxzyd_2u-Ru7t2ZDJGL6OpQsJqh69A4OmauX0BINbKEsgEnh7uoam-04GXS1U5B_c9Y1_gSV_aFa29yxiMwcDvidqoSPNKlf50MFRl0TTIhUO6OEGk5s_9o0mkhr6sgEkOpvv2Ku/s200/PartyANC.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 50px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" /></a> Comrades' ANC Our legendary comrades are promising a better life for all with Msholozi sitting in the driving seat of our beloved country. The good <ul><li>Leader who can get down </li><li>Get out of jail free cards </li><li>Comrades for life </li><li>Trevor Manuel, Barbara Hogan </li></ul>The bad <ul><li>Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Tony Yengeni, Carl Niehaus, Shaiks </li><li>Julius Malema </li><li>Alliance partners </li><li>Beetroot policies </li></ul>Voting for the ANC will get you: a better life, which entails a tender, a flexible understanding of the law, membership to the richest church in South Africa and, yes, a Cabinet seat may come in handy. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYHgSnB-Iz4Ypne9Y98UD7unDBVm0kGTf2F5vygVFth0Ym12X3bovC2CdJhQ4LXHU8yonTHuJ_aXlWKElmxXBwt9JJPsdCV6a6d4cjegJLOP3hRHhKAA3z6TtIGvXpIzGmP0B08jAi1GTy/s1600-h/PartyDA.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327995596379428194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYHgSnB-Iz4Ypne9Y98UD7unDBVm0kGTf2F5vygVFth0Ym12X3bovC2CdJhQ4LXHU8yonTHuJ_aXlWKElmxXBwt9JJPsdCV6a6d4cjegJLOP3hRHhKAA3z6TtIGvXpIzGmP0B08jAi1GTy/s200/PartyDA.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 50px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" /></a> The saviour, the Democratic Alliance The DA stands for a "prosperous open opportunity society in which every person is free". Of course, you've heard that before — only about 100 times in the past month. The good <ul><li>World Mayor who speaks IsiXhosa </li><li>A bit of Obama in their logo </li><li>Extra cash in the coffers </li><li>Web-savvy politicians </li></ul>The not-so-good <ul></ul><li>Wrinkle (and expression) free leadership </li><li>Opposition, opposition, opposition </li><li>Only 12.37 percent </li><li>A melanin deficit (which will cost them votes) </li>Voting for the DA will guarantee you a guilt-free trip to the plastic surgeon, savings of R1m per month on Zuma's security and well… let's just say it… a full-time job criticising the ANC. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5tTB9I-OiuFfWNMm7Nl7Elhc3gnyUuwbpSHmegNmVOdgFoRIbqNzVToaA1D6IwTZZTBMaSLzqy-SfzlcpdSIkh8MznyGHjnUiG-hKJbUQ_E4igvGoU4H7ieo2jzLVCqKIrh2qeM0FtdYE/s1600-h/PartyUDM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327996056606181026" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5tTB9I-OiuFfWNMm7Nl7Elhc3gnyUuwbpSHmegNmVOdgFoRIbqNzVToaA1D6IwTZZTBMaSLzqy-SfzlcpdSIkh8MznyGHjnUiG-hKJbUQ_E4igvGoU4H7ieo2jzLVCqKIrh2qeM0FtdYE/s200/PartyUDM.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 50px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" /></a> The General (UDM) The UDM is all about Bantu Holomisa. Sure, they probably have policies, but who knows? Or, for that matter, who cares? The good <ul><li>Entertaining outbursts from Bantu </li><li>Exposing corruption within the ANC </li><li>Bantu sticks to his guns </li><li>Some more stuff about the ANC </li></ul>The bad <ul><li>What have they done in the past ten years? </li><li>Do you even know what UDM stands for? </li><li>Bantu's dodgy Transkei rule </li><li>Too much about Bantu and the ANC </li><li>Voting for the UDM will get you Bantu. Just more of him. </li></ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-tW6sEfh663lP6aCep7TFYYgcAPR6kd841wh1pAeMO-cy7Yv1UY3h82UTZaZ6Qy__ctVgXidDbBXHyDg_fCjpPOV_gf3r5Nb9DRnzpSlKzQ-9dYJRvRbrIwsL9ZzVW0DSTdNVe2NZbNHs/s1600-h/PartyACDP.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327995594576651842" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-tW6sEfh663lP6aCep7TFYYgcAPR6kd841wh1pAeMO-cy7Yv1UY3h82UTZaZ6Qy__ctVgXidDbBXHyDg_fCjpPOV_gf3r5Nb9DRnzpSlKzQ-9dYJRvRbrIwsL9ZzVW0DSTdNVe2NZbNHs/s200/PartyACDP.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 50px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" /></a> The Biblical ACDP Zuma's been to church, but the ACDP got there first. Yip, Rev. Kenneth Meshoe is all about preaching politics… The godly ACDP <ul><li>Rejected election funding </li><li>Against promiscuity </li><li>Against polygamy </li><li>Promises to bring back morality </li></ul>The not-so-godly <ul><li>Rejects pregnant girls </li><li>They are called the African Christian Democratic Party </li><li>A little too keen on the death penalty </li><li>Pulpit politics </li></ul>Voting for the ACPD will lead to a better South Africa… unless, of course, you are gay, lesbian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, follow traditional culture or are faced with an unwanted pregnancy. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikbdJ5L0QYleEQPesiciSwrdYuWX9_Cem18Zc2xLWSfnV_B_-iSX9dyjpr_xvyRXRlAdnEPh-gDBAiJ1W2T-DTd7GaVshrX9H4eHR8oHAOIwx78rhF0VufLCXsHxM_AZFx_5lG_JvGl-Jr/s1600-h/PartyIFP.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327996058379445458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikbdJ5L0QYleEQPesiciSwrdYuWX9_Cem18Zc2xLWSfnV_B_-iSX9dyjpr_xvyRXRlAdnEPh-gDBAiJ1W2T-DTd7GaVshrX9H4eHR8oHAOIwx78rhF0VufLCXsHxM_AZFx_5lG_JvGl-Jr/s200/PartyIFP.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 50px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" /></a> The veteran IFP The IFP has Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi and KwaZulu-Natal. No... wait... scratch that. They lost KwaZulu-Natal in the last elections. The good <ul><li>Vocal about HIV/Aids </li><li>Standing up for the Dalai Lama </li><li>Promoting gender equality </li><li>Priceless quotes from Buthelezi </li></ul>The bad <ul><li>KZN violence </li><li>Cult of Buthelezi </li><li>Losing the Zulu vote </li><li>Youth leader a fraudster </li></ul>Voting for the IFP will help… <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJnxms7cOT-5kxManopHIpStWvbfl6KKrWkRYnMWlNXKjGGAdkxt-UQGb58VO-C3H-fv2XDHgRQo49jgHY90XRckrOCklLjHwwKfsOJv8sZIqiN38HYLxFPToX0yED3U1yhXRP9DoIv__v/s1600-h/PartyCOPE.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327995603164464562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJnxms7cOT-5kxManopHIpStWvbfl6KKrWkRYnMWlNXKjGGAdkxt-UQGb58VO-C3H-fv2XDHgRQo49jgHY90XRckrOCklLjHwwKfsOJv8sZIqiN38HYLxFPToX0yED3U1yhXRP9DoIv__v/s200/PartyCOPE.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 50px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" /></a> The new kid on the block: Cope Are they coping? Well, they'd like us to believe that they are, but their marketing strategy says otherwise… The good <ul><li>Threatens the ANC's two-thirds majority </li><li>A party of the new South Africa </li><li>Mvume Dandala </li><li>Shikota </li></ul>The bad <ul><li>Allan Boesak </li><li>ANC lite </li><li>Defection of ANC defectors </li><li>No funds </li></ul>Voting for Cope will cost your position in government. Vote Cope and lose everything that was given to you by the current government. If you are not in government then you will learn to cope, yes, cope. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlP_ymL3ZKfs9swufSVHv3jbVRTLeuhs5gJebug1fYBFfSkdwXgJSa9YD_WW6bCmtjOZ1xJt65aRCApJIJ36vzkNIMFXUwphF3fQFQo2eg1FZm1_aN4EjflNotkJSImObpoBqIUxJPb49b/s1600-h/PartyID.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327995603826386546" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlP_ymL3ZKfs9swufSVHv3jbVRTLeuhs5gJebug1fYBFfSkdwXgJSa9YD_WW6bCmtjOZ1xJt65aRCApJIJ36vzkNIMFXUwphF3fQFQo2eg1FZm1_aN4EjflNotkJSImObpoBqIUxJPb49b/s200/PartyID.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 50px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" /></a> Arms deal… oops… the ID Patricia De Lille is serious about fighting corruption so it's no wonder that every time she opens her mouth, she utters the arms deal. Move on De Lille, look for something else. The good <ul><li>Patricia de Lille </li><li>Patricia de Lille </li><li>Patricia de Lille </li><li>Uhm… Patricia de Lille? </li></ul>The bad <ul><li>Patricia on the arms deal </li><li>Patricia on the arms deal </li><li>Patricia on the arms deal </li><li>Patricia on the arms deal </li></ul>Voting for the ID will get you a whistle and a cool ringtone. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtQvG8vbIGLMSurznNuHdKs9pSsuBOzIIEUxz3v4YMq9IPlePfxNxKnve8ZXwSLVX4MB4i3Pos3on7hkRoJaILrKhTKFcsswPscEEoBOmoOujbB0pR6-HLiGac_VswYnLcHpcVBlrWiYY/s1600-h/PartyVF.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327996062812586034" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBtQvG8vbIGLMSurznNuHdKs9pSsuBOzIIEUxz3v4YMq9IPlePfxNxKnve8ZXwSLVX4MB4i3Pos3on7hkRoJaILrKhTKFcsswPscEEoBOmoOujbB0pR6-HLiGac_VswYnLcHpcVBlrWiYY/s200/PartyVF.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 50px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" /></a> The Freedom Front Plus The FF+ is all about freedom. More particularly, all about freedom for those speaking Afrikaans… The good <ul><li>Looking out for minority rights </li><li>An entertaining youth league </li><li>Looking out for the Springboks </li><li>Providing some competition for Cosatu </li></ul>The bad <ul><li>It's all about Afrikaners, really </li><li>It didn't work the last time </li><li>Not likely to secure the majority vote </li><li>They felt the need to add a 'plus' to their name </li></ul>Vote FF+ and get more sokkie treffers and Pieter Mulder! Welcome to Pollywood! Make the right choice and vote for your favourite entertainers.

What your Vote's going to get you in today's Elections.

As a voter you should go through all the party manifestos before making an informed decision about which party best suits your needs… but th...

10:53 PM

The ANC finds its enemy within

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTnDZ_QpAVD-mjUy3Hxctu3zsvVc8l4UlDKrMY2-8z4TROyhSHecvyfzwOzespYMj0A-CoKEsoo_HLuNDDDu9J3-xH4H7p3EDO4lET76rxhEgjKHhK4ZtlsannKJxXSJNjwrR3ZVtBc_xg/s1600-h/anc_elections_perfomance_trend.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326876179819991458" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTnDZ_QpAVD-mjUy3Hxctu3zsvVc8l4UlDKrMY2-8z4TROyhSHecvyfzwOzespYMj0A-CoKEsoo_HLuNDDDu9J3-xH4H7p3EDO4lET76rxhEgjKHhK4ZtlsannKJxXSJNjwrR3ZVtBc_xg/s400/anc_elections_perfomance_trend.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 284px" /></a>Stanley Uys 20 April 2009 04:32 The African National Congress, having exchanged the monastic Thabo Mbeki for the celebrity Jacob Zuma, will romp home to victory in Wednesday's general elections, although the edge will be taken off the triumph by expected reduced ANC majorities (except in KwaZulu-Natal where Jacob Zuma has diverted the Zulus from the Inkatha Freedom Party into the ANC). However, whatever the outcome, Zuma's spin doctors will claim an "overwhelming" victory, which is what the lavishly funded ANC campaigned for (donations by courtesy of Libya, China, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and numerous businessmen). Seeing that the ANC already has 296 (74%) of the 400 National Assembly seats (this includes the 2005 and 2007 floor-crossers), an "overwhelming" victory means bringing the parliamentary opposition as close to extinction as possible. Still, the ANC's pursuit of a two-thirds majority is a bit odd. Already, it has a two-thirds majority and can change the constitution when it likes. Why does it wait? And why does it want a change? This makes one think that Wednesday's elections are not particularly important- that the tectonic plates moved at Polokwane in last December and that what is left now is certification of the shift - and confirmation that black politics have reduced themselves to an in-house brawl in which power and greed provide the momentum. Policies will come later. In Business Day (16 April), Professor Susan Booysen of Witwatersrand University, in an otherwise acutely perceptive article, suggests "a post-election ceasefire while troops regroup for the 2012 ANC succession battle." This is when the ANC re-elects a new leader. The idea of a ceasefire is attractive to a warring nation, but the scramble for top jobs clearly will intensify after the elections, not subside. As Professor Booysen points out the state institutions in South Africa are "the trenches of the ANC's raging civil war of 2005-09". She mentions in particular the extension of "state subjugation" among "the judiciary, the Cabinet, premiers and mayors, directors-general, ministerial advisers and lower-ranking public servants, parastatals, parliament, provincial legislatures and municipalities, the security apparatus, the state bureaucracy and the Presidency". The whole tutti-frutti. The scramble for power in the ANC will be even more bruising than those that started in the 1994 elections. Thabo Mbeki "deployed" his cronies widely and in key positions. This was resented and caused him to be ousted from office. The scramble that is taking place now could last for months and maybe even for much of the new five-year term of office, and it will be brutal. ANC "loyalists" have been embedded in their comfortable jobs for such a long time that they will be spitting venom when they are turfed out. Booysen says that in a decade-plus of cadre deployment (jobs for cronies) Mbeki created an almost impenetrable institutional fortress. Zuma's gang intends to demonstrate just how penetrable this fortress is. Booysens touches on another point: the centralisation of power under the presidency. In Mbeki's case, he was the feared and undisputed puppeteer. Zuma is not within reach of this power. The present ANC leadership are a floppy lot. They appear to lack coherence; analysts are not sure in which direction they will pull once they take cabinet office. For example, only last week one of the more respected leaders, Mathews Phosa, said he had rushed to ask Zuma what he meant by his remark that the Constitutional Court judges are not "gods." Zuma gave the usual vague denial. Contemptuous remarks, too, have been made of Zuma by the secretary general of his most important backer, Cosatu. One wonders how long Zuma (and his promises) will last. The ANC leadership is a hotchpotch: The Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) wants to reverse Mbeki's market-driven macro-economics and replace them with a leftward shift; the SA Communist Party sees an early leftward shift as an interim move towards communism; the ANC Youth League, is a loose cannon if ever there was one; and the Young Communist League suggested the SACP should team up with Cosatu and seize the ANC leadership from those who see themselves as plain ANC. Mondli Makhanya, editor of the Johannesburg Sunday Times, has no illusions about the "vengeful noises" coming from the Zuma camp. He writes (April 11) about "baying for blood" and "frothing at the mouth." Over the next few years, he says, "we may see the victors chase the vanquished into the caves and forests and hunt them until there is not one left standing. They will seek to destroy their careers, squeeze their businesses and generally make life miserable for them." Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni is said to be for the chop, and Finance minister Trevor Manuel is playing funny games with the ANC which may or may not save his job. The Zuma camp regard both men as being too orthodox in the Mbeki style. There is not much opportunity here for a ceasefire. Then there is Cope - the Congress of the People - a breakaway from the ANC after Mbeki's ousting. Cope is not quite such a witches' brew as the ANC itself, but like the ANC it does not have a core idea - e.g. the "liberation" struggle - to give the party the cohesion it lacks. Thus, like the ANC, it is experiencing factionalism. From 1912 to 2005, the ANC pulsated on "liberation," the "struggle," etc. Both the ANC and Cope continue to invoke these familiar terms, but they cancel each other out: rivals cannot have the same slogans. Also, "liberation" from what? And "struggle" against whom? The ANC is the government, so complaints should be addressed to it, not to unspecified enemies. So far, neither the ANC nor Cope have been able to find a peg on which to hang the election. Blaming the local white population is pretty feeble. So Wednesday's election is a power struggle within the black community - with consequences for everyone. For years the ANC, playing the "liberation" card to its limit, has shut out non-African voters who are no more than "minorities" now, trawling at the fringes of the 96-year-old liberation movement. In the process, the ANC has boxed itself in, in a new formalised way, so that the only plausible enemies left are those within the box, which means internal factionalism against each other. The conflict reached a peak when Cope broke away from the ANC. For a government which has been in power since 1994 to blame "colonialism" for South Africa's multiple problems is pretty pathetic. The solutions are within the box, and until that box cracks open black politics will not be able to make the transition from self-destruction to a wider, diverse society. Then there could be real "liberation." Cope is not a happy outfit. Mbhazima Shilowa (Mbeki's man) is at loggerheads with Cope's joint leader, Mosiuoa (Terror) Lekota. What holds them together is their fury at Mbeki being kicked out of office by the ANC and the question of how to keep their own show on the road. But as a political force this kind of emotionalism is pallid. The best Cope can hope for is to cut down the ANC's majority. After all, at Polokwane, 40% of 4,000 voting delegates backed Mbeki. Yet where are they now? Many it seems have run for cover since Cope's formation, leaving only the bravest to vote silently and secretly for Mbeki. Cope's problem is that it does not have a solid base of black voters. The Markinor poll said 78.7% of "likely voters" are black and that the ANC enjoyed the support of 78.8% of black respondents. The poll for Cope was 6.8 percent. As James Myburgh notes in his comments on the Markinor poll, "It is striking that Cope enjoys a higher stated support among the minority groups polled than it does in the black majority". Cope makes little sense: its top layer are doomed men and women and many of the lower ranks are likely soon to be jobless too (the global financial crunch anyway is helping to create a "jobless bloodbath" in the country). The poll by the way gives the ANC only 4.4 of white respondents. Everyone knows Cope cannot protect the patronage they enjoyed under Mbeki. Zuma can get rid of a lot of Mbeki appointees (even if he retains the skills of some of them). As president, his patronage will be limited anyway - Mbeki used up most of it. How much is left in the kitty? And waiting on the station platform for their gravy grain are the ANC Youth League, Cosatu, the SACP, the Young Communist League, Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Mbeki's "cadre deployment" severely damaged South Africa's governance, and now the question is how much more damage can be inflicted by replacing "deployed" Mbeki men by "deployed" Zuma men? The situation is depressing for the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition in the National Assembly, with 47 of the 400 seats. Its strength is in the Western Cape Province (where Coloured voters, many deserting the ANC, can swing results), and it hopes not only to make further gains on Wednesday, but also possibly to capture the provincial premiership (its leader, Helen Zille, is already mayor of Cape Town), and to leave its footprints in at least half of the eight other provinces. The DA has the support of 31.59% of likely Coloured voters, 29.6 of Indian voters and 59.8% of white voters - but only 0.8 percent of black respondents. To attract national support, the DA has to break through the box - the blockage that prevents blacks from voting for "white" parties. At its formation, Cope attracted the interest of quite a few white voters - to which the DA makes the observation that these are wasted votes, because Cope is going nowhere. Similarly, Coloureds and Indians who vote for Cope are wasting their vote. Inevitably, after the elections, as small parties scramble for a foothold on the political scene, coalitions will be the name of a very tricky game. Depending on how this game is played, South African politics can be lifted on to higher levels; however, the lesson of the past decade is that small parties which enter into coalitions with the ANC with the personal ambitions of leaders in mind can come to a sorry end. At present, the NA has 16 opposition parties, with only the DA, and to a diminishing extent the Inkatha Freedom Party, carrying any real weight. Wednesday's elections may weaken the IFP even further, while strengthening the DA. This would leave the DA as the only significant player in the opposition field. Hence the DA slogan: don't waste your vote. Zille remarks: "When the opposition is divided the ANC wins....In the 2008 parliamentary session, five of the small opposition parties in the NA did not ask a single written or oral question, introduce a single Private Members' Bill or propose a single motion." The DA was responsible for 86% of the 1,757 written questions...In 2008 (it) introduced 76.6% of the 47 motions in the NA. Zille described the (one-time pro-apartheid) Freedom Front Plus's record as "disgraceful" - in eight months it attended only 35 of 755 committee meetings." A vote for a small opposition party is a wasted vote. Only the DA can "stand up to the ANC's power abuse... the ANC has brought us to the brink of a constitutional crisis." Conclusion Deep down, the political war in South Africa is about Mbeki's market-oriented macro-economics: will they be shifted leftwards or not? Will the pace of "transformation" spelt out in Cosatu and SACP discussion documents be slowed down or speeded up? Will the radicals begin their long-promised march towards socialism, or will they be far too busy buying their Mercs and BMWs to get around to implementing anything? It is pointless looking to the business world for guidance because, as the media report, "Investor confidence in a Jacob Zuma presidency is high despite the many question marks over his leadership." Black politics are in turmoil in South Africa, and the more far-seeing analysts think it may take five or even ten years before politics take on a shape that even remotely merits a "democratic" label. Yet, business leaders persist in declaring they are content with Zuma's assurance that "nothing will change", that Mbekism is safe, even if Mbeki himself has been disarmed and sent to sulk in his Johannesburg garden. Almost daily warnings from the ANC that everything will change leave them unmoved. There it is. The people on whose success the country's prosperity depends are relaxed (although dare they say anything else?) Through the ANC though happily they are making new friends, such as the Chinese. They really should have a joint Facebook account - for which Confucius has already written the frontispiece: Those whose courses are different cannot lay plans for one another

The ANC finds its enemy within

Stanley Uys 20 April 2009 04:32 The African National Congress, having exchanged the monastic Thabo Mbeki for the celebrity Jacob Zuma, will ...

1:16 PM

ANC hijack Madiba again!

A shocking affair - I heard some of Zuma's speech, broadcast on TV yesterday <img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326827109804416242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguQ-pLKwohtegW_V6OS4ZaSYTr6zoD6BvNAgChHqrv75me9N0KdYA7vS8eEYdY6NRGDISGO-ZiN6obbM4JrN24g8DEsrZMpFjEtoU7zxGntWxJHPIzjJtG8gtDGx3Kn3-kbqFlPKr9WWUQ/s400/Nelson-Mandela-Winnie-Jac-001.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" />Former South African president Nelson Mandela is helped on to the stage by current ANC president and presidential candidate Jacob Zuma, left, and former wife Winnie at the start of an ANC rally in Johannesburg Sunday"Former president Nelson Mandela asked to be taken to the Coca-Cola Park stadium in Johannesburg for the ANC's Siyanqoba ("we are winning") rally" ANC president Jacob Zuma said on Sunday. Zuma said this to allay critics who lashed out at the party in February when Mandela attended an African National Congress election rally in Idutywa in the Eastern Cape. "Today Mandela is here with his family. Let's also clarify this fact for those who like to comment on issues like these: The leader of the ANC... the icon of this country asked us to take him to the rally in the Eastern Cape and we obeyed his instructions. "Once again, he asked again to be part of the Siyanqoba rally today," Zuma said. Mandela was among senior ANC leaders who had attended the rally in Johannesburg along with thousands of supporters on Sunday. As he was driven by golf cart into the stadium, the crowd erupted into cheers and members of Umkhonto we Sizwe rallied around to prevent members of the media and the public from getting closer to him. The Hijacking of Madiba 26 February 2009<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326828742783935522" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp1uk43MajC3lXEYV5dfH7nHrSQEEUeuSYlU2uOHq53I29ZIS240lRJAmdUbipSrvAbEHkes_iSpW6VWapwjnzLeXbKwHQ1BZMIqGPvPfh_9a15cwXp9hihhN-ZWu0mT4qB8h-GmU_arxY/s400/mandela-zuma.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 261px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /> Former South African president Nelson Mandela is helped on to the stage by current ANC president and presidential candidate Jacob Zuma, left, at the start of an ANC rally in Eastern Cape in FebruaryThere have surely been few more disgraceful moments in South African politics than the one enacted last week when Nelson Mandela was physically hijacked by the ANC to go politicking for Jacob Zuma. Now 90, and frail, Mandela was flown in a private plane, without his usual bodyguard and medical backup, from his Johannesburg home to Idutywa in the Eastern Cape. Repeatedly, he had told his staff that he did not want to get involved in current politics, but his hijackers neither informed nor consulted the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which usually had supervised his travel arrangements. At the rally, Zuma helped to hoist him on to the stage. The full story is told in last week's Sunday Times, which quoted a family friend: "Shame, the old man really doesn't deserve this kind of nonsense at this time of his life". Just what pressures the Zuma gang used to persuade Mandela to go to Idutywa are still to be revealed. An ANC spokesman gave this assurance: "Mandela still has his full senses...he won't do what he does not want to do". But South African politics are confusing, and the assumption is possible that Mandela was manoeuvred into thinking that the ANC is still an honourable institution - a legend approaching its centenary - and that it is his solemn duty to protect it. The question persists: does Madiba understand fully that the ANC is no longer a legend? Which ANC does he support - the one-time legend? The Polokwane manifestation (and the Jacob Zuma versus Kgalema Motlanthe schism within it)? The Cope breakaway (and the Lekota versus Mvume Dandala schism within the breakaway)? Is Madiba keenly observing the run-up to the general election battle on April 22, and if so does he agree with Thabo Mbeki's brother Moeletsi that the ANC poll in the elections could be between 48% and 55%? If Moeletsi, an experienced analyst, is right, then certain scenarios play out: ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe is "living in cloud-cuckoo land" if he thinks (as he publicly declared) that "We don't want a two-thirds majority; we want a three-thirds majority". Moeletsi is also right then to dismiss the possibility of the ANC securing a two-thirds majority; and he might just be right that the ANC will fall short even of a simple majority. So which ANC does Madiba support? Either he keeps himself up to date with what is happening in the ANC, and makes his trips to Idutywa, or he goes to bed. To enlighten himself though, he might read the article Mondli Makhanya (Sunday Times editor) wrote last week about Julius Malema's election as president of the ANC Youth League. In the article, Makhanya recorded how he had asked a senior ANC member "how a movement with so noble a history could choose a hooligan to be its leader"? The ANC member explained that the ANCYL was about militancy: each generation of leadership has to be more militant than the previous one. "And after Malema?" inquired Makhanya. "We cannot go backwards', answered the ANC member. "We will need someone more militant." Is this the ANC for which Madiba flew to Idutywa? Madiba has no love for Thabo Mbeki, but in some ways Mbeki knows his own people better than most. Delivering the Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture on July 29, 2006, then President Mbeki spoke about "the demons embedded in our society". He said: "Thus, every day, and during every hour of our time beyond sleep, the demons embedded in our society, that stalk us at every minute, seem always to beckon each one of us towards a realisable dream and nightmare. With every passing second, they advise, with rhythmic and hypnotic regularity - ‘Get rich! Get rich! Get rich!" Is this the Idutywa ANC? Is this the ANC membership as Madiba knows it? Is it because he no longer knows his own people that he allowed the Zuma gang to humiliate him? Does he accept what Justice Malala wrote in the Times last week: "The party (ANC), unless it does something dramatic, is finished. It will win this year's election, but 2014? And after that? It is over for the continent's oldest liberation movement. It is now just another grubby political party". Source <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=118983&sn=Detail">The hijacking of Madiba</a> <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/">http://www.politicsweb.co.za/</a>

ANC hijack Madiba again!

A shocking affair - I heard some of Zuma's speech, broadcast on TV yesterday Former South African president Nelson Mandela is helped on ...

8:06 AM

South Africa P.I.G.