Was I wrong about the Zunami?

Mhambi has gone on record a number of times that Jacob Zuma might be a better president than Mbeki. He would struggle to do worse. He is more approachable, direct and that he would be a better candidate for the South African poor, because he is left leaning.

Well, is the new ANC more left? Or are we due for some more talking left walking right?

Two recent pieces of commentary and the actions of the ANC themselves have made me have serious doubts.

John Kane-Berman said earlier this week that several commentators argued that the real opposition to the government now comes from within the ruling party, not from opposition parties.

"There is a grain of truth in this, but it is mainly nonsense.

...on matters of policy, the Mbeki government seldom faced much opposition from either his parliamentary caucus or his party at large. Former education minister Kader Asmal last year spoke out against President Robert Mugabe. This belated lone voice aside, Mbeki’s policy of appeasement towards Mugabe has all along had his party’s support. Steal elections, ruin the economy, destroy the rule of law, squash human rights and ruin lives — none of this stopped the ANC, taking its cue from Mbeki, from cheering Mugabe when he jetted into town.

Nor was there much dissent on AIDS. Mbeki flirted with dissident theories and employed an equally misguided health minister, but nobody in the ANC spoke out while they thus trifled with people’s lives.

No dissent either when the government stifled the probe into the 1999 arms deal by the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa). Scopa started off its probe in a non-partisan manner. Then Mbeki and the deputy president, Jacob Zuma, weighed in with the help of ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni and the acquiescence of the speaker, Frene Ginwala. Mbeki was not prepared to permit an independent investigation.

Nobody in the ANC was willing to stand up for the right — and duty — of Parliament to hold the executive branch of the government to account for its expenditure of the public’s money. Since holding the executive to account is a parliamentary function prescribed by the constitution, this means that the majority party’s willingness to stand up for the constitution is open to doubt.

Nor is there much prospect that anyone in the ANC will object to plans to destroy the independence of the Scorpions or to undermine that of the judiciary.

These are all matters of principle, not party-political issues. But there has been little dissent on key areas of policy either. This includes the pervasive policy of racial preferencing. If black empowerment policies have been criticised, it has been on the grounds that they benefit an elite rather than the poor.

In Beards only sign of a move to the left Aubrey Matshiqi agreed:

This shift to the left is supported neither by the resolutions of the ANC’s December conference nor by the content of the budget speech, unless an increase in social spending should be seen as the victory of Marxist-Leninist-Hugo Chavezist thought over Hugo Boss-inspired policy orientations.

In my view, any shift in the short term that may occur in the ANC’s economic policy trajectory will most likely fall within the 1996 macroeconomic paradigm. This flows from my belief that the clash between newly elected ANC president Jacob Zuma and former party head Thabo Mbeki was more about a rift within the establishment and less about tensions between the establishment and an anti-establishment impulse.

Further more, the forces that united behind Zuma’s presidential ambitions should not be given some mythical leftist agenda — the support for Zuma by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) had no ideological basis.

Zuma is much closer to Mbeki in ideological terms than he is to Zwelinzima Vavi of Cosatu and Blade Nzimande of the SACP. This is why he went to the World Economic Forum in Davos and told investors there would be no change in economic policy.

Aubrey is also concerned about the increase in the budget surplus because of unspent Government money.

"What I know is that I am less excited about the budget surplus than I was before. It seems a large chunk of the surplus comes from money that the government departments fail to spend.

...This is the same Parliament that has very little influence in determining budget priorities. The problem is that the budget continues to be the tail that wags the policy dog."

But the problem is of course that the government do not have the staff and the skills to implement their budget allocations. This will be a subject of another post of mine.

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The Afro-pessimists are restless

The Mail and Guardian blog sections have published two interesting posts yesterday. In one Percy Zvomuya pessimistically asks, in reaction to events in Kenya What is wrong with Africa?.

He should have been more careful because in another post, The new is not yet born: The battle for African democracy, Stephen Friedman calls these "Afro-pessimists — a long, fancy word for people who don’t believe black people in Africa can run anything." But concedes that they have no shortage of ammunition right now.

In the first comment underneath Steven post Ivo Vegter retorts: "The real problem is that in all the racist analysis, everyone gets cast as either an Afro-pessimist or an Afro-optimist. Critics and racists alike go into the first category, and those who vote their racial loyalty or guilty conscience go in the latter. Oddly enough, this feeds off the notion that Africans are somehow different, that the question of whether Africans are capable of self-government is still unanswered. Of course Africans are capable of self-government. Why wouldn’t they be?"

Ivo wants us to argue about the policies of these governments and put the lables behind us.

For a long time Mhambi has agreed with Steven's central contention however. What has transpired in Zimbabwe and in the ANC were signs of democracy. He states this case better:
"In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s government ruled largely unchallenged until 2000, when it lost a constitutional referendum, a thinly disguised signal that the people wanted it gone. This forced it into a lengthy attempt to stay in power despite the people’s judgement. Since then, politics in Zimbabwe has been about the elite’s desperate and often violent attempts to shore up their power in the face of democratic forces’ attempt to win change.

In Kenya, tensions were suppressed (but simmered below the surface) while Daniel arap Moi imposed his will on the people for two decades. Democracy was partly achieved when some members of the elite, most notably current President Mwai Kibaki, went over to the opposition and won the last election. But the Kibaki government proved far more like the one it had replaced than Kenyan democrats had hoped and so the ODM emerged to challenge Kibaki. Despite the mealy-mouthed response of the international community, the evidence suggests that the ruling elite thwarted this attempt to deepen democracy by creatively embellishing the election results. Again, the conflict is caused by democratic pressures and the old elite’s response to them.

In Nigeria, a new push for greater democracy began with the fall of the Abacha junta. Previous president Olusegun Obasanjo was elected at the polls but tried to change the Constitution to give himself a third term. Parliament rejected the attempt and so he relied on a strategy also tried in some other countries — he stayed on as head of the ruling party and hand-picked its presidential candidate. But he continues to face resistance, both because the election in which Obasanjo’s choice, Umaru Yar’Adua, won was riddled with irregularities and because Yar’Adua has not turned out as compliant as his predecessor had hoped (a problem that also faced some other presidents who tried to control their successors after their terms were up). Again, the cause of the conflict is the push for more democracy and the elite’s reaction to it.

Here, Jacob Zuma’s victory was prompted by claims that Thabo Mbeki was not accountable enough to the ANC — and fears that a third term would entrench him further. We do not know whether the new leadership will be more democratic than the old — but it remains possible that ANC activists will hold it to account if it is not.

The pattern is clear. The “right” of African presidents to rule for as long as they like, regardless of what their people may think, is under threat.

Mhambi hopes Steven Friedman is right, Mhambi himself is struggling to keep the faith at times.

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Out of our blue heavens - Machine guns

South Africa is wonderfully baffling. Last week Mhambi was listening to the opening of the ANC Polokwane conference on SAFM.


Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma confer at ANC conference in Polokwane, South Africa.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.


After Thabu Mbeki and Jacob Zuma entered the conference, and Zuma-ite delegates were persuaded to stop singing Awuleth’ Umshini Wami, it was announced that it was time for delegates to sing South Africa’s charming schizo National Anthem.

Now Mhambi is not sure whether it was perhaps SAFM’s microphone set-up’s fault, or perhaps the lingering tension of Umshini Wami that went before it.

But the opening strains of the Nkosi Sikilel part of the anthem, was well, strained. Nobody was in the mood to evoke God to save Africa when delegates had just boisterously called for their machine guns.

Slowly delegates gathered themselves and Nkosi picked up a head of steam, from a death march to near death experience she went.

After this tepid performance what would transpire when they reached Die stem, I thought, half expecting the ANC crowd not to even attempt to go into ‘ve^r verlate vlaktes’ in this state.

But out they belted ‘Uit die blou van onse hemel…’ and nope this was no mirage, out came ‘die diepte van ons see’ as well. Full throttle all the way they powered to ‘South Africa our land’.

What’s going on here I thought? Was it because of the Springboks’ proud nation building Nkosi rendition at the Rugby World Cup, which was now being reciprocated?

Was it because the scheming Thabu had sometime ago maligned Die Stem, as he has done with so many other things and people, and now it was time for some of those people to rub his nose in whatever things they could find to rub his nose in?

Soon it was Thabu’s turn to deliver his ANC President’s speech. A dour two hour regurgitation of the successes of his administration, but without mentioning that were in the middle of a global commodity boom, or Aids and the crime pandemic.

When he mentioned the Springboks, Thabu brought the house down for the first and it transpired later, the second last time. The last time was when he stopped his speech. As he sat down Umshini Wami reverberated again.

Lekker.

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You've got to fight, for your right, to Party!

By the time Jacob Zuma was confirmed as ANC president a few things had already dawned on Mhambi. To many, especially in the SABC, the ANC is equated with the state. Presenters on SAFM on a few occasions casually referred to “we are waiting for the new president to make his speech” with no qualification whatsoever. To them the ANC president was president of the country.


ANC delegates standing at the Polokwane conference.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos.

And from the amount of coverage the ANC conference received, it is clear that no other party can expect any parity coverage of their conferences. There simply wont be any time for that, even if the will was there.

The SABC could well argue that there was a countrywide interest in the goings on of the party, well beyond the world of ANC members. Which brings me to my next point.

Perhaps its time to give up on the pretense of having a multi-party state (for now anyway). It is clear that for some time to come, the ANC’s struggle credentials will triumph all comers, regardless of how corrupt and controlling the ANC has become as a government.

All South Africans should join the party forthwith, and start participating and voting from within it. Yes, as Andrew Feinstein has noted that this is a party that values loyalty above all else. So a mass joining will probably be followed my mass firings, but at least we'd have tried.

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We are marching to Polokwane, Polokwane

Mhambi has a "lied is sy hart" this morning. Not entirely sure why I'm so lyrical, but perhaps its because I'm in lovely South Africa and the paradoxical jittery energy induced after a bout of too much red wine last night.

This week after having read After the Party my suspicions that a Zuma presidency could do the country some good was roundly confirmed.

And today Steven Friedman and Sipho Seepe lifted my already good mood with two articles in the Business Day (Weird how South Africa's best social journalism comes form a business newspaper).

In an article tittled The open contest nobody could stop Friedman muses about the good that this open content is doing us, "...unless someone in the ANC leadership pulls a last-minute rabbit out of the hat, next week will see the first contested election for ANC president in 58 years — for the first time since we became a democracy, the leader of the governing party will have been chosen not by other leaders but by those to whom that person is responsible.

...

This country achieved democracy partly because adversaries who realised that they could not eliminate each other accepted that their best interests lay in negotiating democratic rules. The rules were not anyone’s first choice, but not only have leaders learned to live with them — they now enjoy wide public support.

This is not unique to SA, or even unusual — leaders often settle on democratic rules because they are the best way of adjusting to realities they wish were otherwise. So misgivings about the presidential race inside the ANC may not prevent it becoming a watershed. ANC insiders who lament an open contest may later look back on it fondly as the time when the principle of open elections was established. Even if they do not, they may find that the contest for members’ votes which they failed to avoid this time becomes the only conceivable way of doing things in future."

In another article Chance for SA to recommit itself to democracy Sipho Seepe, lays into the ANC's culture of intolerance and the corruption of the Mbeki regime. Polekwane is to him a chance to reassert our liberty.

"WE ARE led to believe the ongoing bloodletting in the African National Congress (ANC) is somehow alien to the party.

Far from it, this is a consequence of the ANC’s culture of intolerance and its insatiable appetite for power. The culture can be traced as far back as the 1980s when the ANC sought to entrench its political hegemony.

...

Mandela was labelled an agent of the pharmaceutical companies when he called on the government to roll out antiretroviral medication to pregnant HIV-infected women. Cronin was told that the ANC did not need a white messiah. Similarly, Tutu was branded a liar and a creation of the white media.

The bloodletting we see is a case of chickens coming home to roost. The ferocity of the attacks is fuelled by the scramble for resources and the corrupting patronage that has become a defining feature of the Mbeki regime. We mistakenly overrated the ANC’s democratic credentials by equating the struggle for democracy with a commitment to democracy.

The declaration by ANC parliamentarians that the Zimbabwean elections were fundamentally free and fair despite the state-sponsored terror preceding them should have sent warning signals. The ANC is not beyond resorting to similar undemocratic practices should its political power base be threatened.

The deployment of ministers, state resources and state organs in a last-ditch attempt to preserve the status quo should come as no surprise. The vulgarity of ministers carrying bags of money to buy votes speaks volumes about the investment attached to the Mbeki project.

...it is not uncommon for leaders to be asked to recuse themselves from office once they have suffered defeat. PW Botha was replaced by FW de Klerk when his party lost confidence in him. The same happened to Margaret Thatcher and recently to Tony Blair. Only those who fear democracy can advance such baseless notions that removing Mbeki would be undemocratic.

Democracy involves fundamentally changing the guard. SA should not short-change itself in its embrace of the democratic project. We need to remind ourselves — the price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

Amen.

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Don't say Mhambi did not tell you so

Prof Anton Harber confirmed today that he agrees with Mhambi. Zuma's showing in ANC nomination bodes well for the ANC, democracy and the country.

I think this is a moment to celebrate, a time to step back from the question of who is winning and recognise the victory for the processes of democracy. The test we have passed, and countries such as Zimbabwe and Angola have failed, is our capacity to challenge incumbency. We have made it clear in the past few weeks that, however dominant the ANC is as a party, no president can be secure in office if he or she neglects their base. The party leadership failed timeously to challenge Mbeki on such disasters as his AIDS policies, but the party membership rose to the occasion when their time came.

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Mbeki pole-axed at Polekwane?

All week dark clouds have gathered around Johannesburg. It was cold and miserable. And then today, alas, the sun broke through.

But in the posh coffee shops of Parktown the mood is somber.

As the Polekwane leadership contest for the ANC's top job (and perhaps the countries) nears, all indications are that the much reviled Jacob Zuma will win.

Zuma, you might remember, has fallen out with many: Not only Mbeki's cronies, but also the champagne socialialists, as well as polite middleclass South African society in general.

Mhambi is more sanguine: I'm on record saying that Zuma can not be worse than Mbeki and that he might be better.

A more open ANC?

Something else that many people seem to miss is how remarkable the situation is, particularly in an African context. A party kicks out the incumbent President by way of its branch membership. That is very rare.

Is this revolution only an example of banal factionalism, or a sign of the ANC as an organisation's inherently mature democratic core?

That will depend on how the ANC treats the loosers. Whether the party and government becomes beset by a Stalinist kind of control freakery and stifles debate as it did a few years ago during Mbeki's zenith of power.

In the mean time I'm enjoying the sun shine.

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Mbeki and Zuma have no moral authority

Mhambi has had a running debate with James over the merits of Thabu Mbeki and Zuma. Yesterday former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein launched a stinging attack on Mbeki and Zuma, saying neither is suitable to lead the country.


Andrew Feinstein
Originally uploaded by BOOKphotoSA.

And he took the words right out of Mhambi's mouth:

“The frontrunners have not displayed the requisite moral leadership to lead the ANC or the country,” Feinstein said. Mbeki’s leadership of the ANC had, he said, fundamentally changed the values of the ANC which he had so revered, and this was a tragedy.

Mbeki’s position on the HIV/ AIDS pandemic, which had seen tens of thousands of lives lost, was unforgiv able. Mbeki had also, in handling allegations relating to the arms deal, undermined the institutions of SA’s democracy — most notably Parliament.

Also, Mbeki’s support for Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and national police commissioner Jackie Selebi was “inexplicable,” he said.

He had undermined the culture of the ANC, Feinstein said. Under his watch the party had divided into factions interested only in power and patronage.

He also reminded his listeners of Zuma’s relations with convicted swindler Schabir Shaik, and opinions voiced in his rape trial.

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Rhamaphosa enters ANC succesion battle while Cosatu warms of divorce

The Rondebosch branch of the ANC has nominated Cyril Ramaphosa as its leader. The branch counts five Cabinet ministers among its members. That is good news indeed. Mhambi is of opinion that Zuma could be a better president than Mbeki. Ramaphosa would be much preferred however.

On Mbeki he has a common touch, charm, a welcome lack of race paranoia, an understanding of the struggles of ordinary workers and the ability to appeal to all communities in South Africa. On Zuma he has brain power, fine organisational abilities, a thorough understanding of economics and business and unblemished moral stature.

Let's hope that the National Union of Mineworkers, South Africa's largest single union the union he used to represent support him.

On Sunday Cosatu warned that if Thabu Mbeki were to re-elected ANC leader, it would mean the end of the tri-partite alliance between it, the ANC and the South African Communist Party.

That would be momentus indeed, and in many ways not a bad thing either.

Meanwhile in Groutville, the party branch founded by former African National Congress (ANC) president Albert Luthuli, has nominated Thabo Mbeki for ANC president.

Arch-rival Jacob Zuma did not even make the branch's list of its top six preferred candidates.

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Mhambi's post rugby blues

After the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup Mhambi felt strangely empty. It was not how I expected to feel. How weird, because Mhambi only just dared to hope that the Bokke will pull off a victory.

Lets be clear, considering the trails and trebulations of this team, the difficulty on winning the World Cup, what a victory would portend politically and the potential ramifications it could have, this was enormous.


Loneliness
Originally uploaded by fabdany.

The decline of Springbok rugby
Let's just recap. Here we have a team, once arguably the best in the world, who had four years ago slipped to such an extent that countries like Scotland (no offence Scotland) thought the Boks would be for there for the taking.

The UK Guardian prior to the previous World Cup in 2003 described the Springboks and being dinosaurs on their way to extinction.

Partly this lack of form was because of the morose depression amongst the mostly Afrikaner rugby playing public. The future was uncertain, crime was rife, there was no room for an expression of political decent or other identities in the country. Whites were immigrating in droves.

But there were more immediate reasons for the loss of form. The team was forced to choose a quota of black players to make it more representative of South Africa. Often the team coach had only a handful of choices of players who cut mustard at a provincial level. And on an international level these few players were often just not good enough.

Jake White chose his quota players in positions where he believed he could get away with it. At prop where knowledge of the dark art of the scrum could be a useful screen of defeciencies. And at wing, where cover defences have more time to react. But this practise did not always mask the deficiencies and oposition teams cottoned on to the weak links. Weak scrumming cost the Boks losses against teams like Wales, a team South Africa had never lost to. It cost us record losses against The All Blacks.

The incredible difficulty of managing a team like this is illustrated the fact that when the team suffered an injury of a black player at wing, White had to also replace another position where he had a black player available (like at prop), if the replacement wing was not black himself. An all white rugby team was simply politically unacceptable.

The pretence of representation
Why this aggressive push by the ANC in an attempt to make the Boks black? This push was not couched in the language of inclusive representation. The struggle for South Africa is as I said before, not just about race. But it is also about two competing sets of nationalism: Afrikaner and African nationalism.

It has been said that the team should be majority black and not merely be more representative. It has even been suggested that the likes of Habana and Pietersen, coloured players, are not black and therefore African enough. And not too long ago ANC members called for this team's white member's passports to be confiscated to prevent them from going to France. And weeks before the World Cup were to start the ANC called for the Springbok name and logo to be replaced.

To Afrikaners who increasingly claim their culture, contributions and history are being wiped from South Africa, this announcement was of more devastating import than the recent name changes of Afrikaner named towns.

When Mhambi wears his cynical hat, this effort from the ANC looks more like a ploy to extend centralist control into another part of South African life, while at the same time killing off one of the only remaining platforms of Afrikaner culture, identity and expression.

But some qouta selections came good. Breyton Paulse for instance developed into a quality and classy international wing. And then came the likes of Bryan Habana. Not only would he be of international standard, he is arguably the best in his position in the world. Come the World Cup White needed at least one other black player to satisfy the politicians. Try as he might Ashwin Willemse was not showing his early promise. J P Pietersen, the man with weak defence and butter fingers made a match winning tackle and ran dangerously, scoring regularly. He became another winger that came good during this World Cup.

Mecurial Percy Montgomery went on to kick all the goals that mattered, Butch James toned down his testosterone, and Frans Steyn did nothing stupid.

And incredibly the Boks went on to win the World Cup.

Wow. And hey, Mhambi has to admit that considering our history it was great that the team was not all white.


rugby world cup2007.jpg
Originally uploaded by jimfitzpix.

So why the empty feeling Mhambi?

Standing on the shoulders of giants
The sight of Thabu Mbeki, the politician that did so much to ditch the talk of reconciliation and reracialised South African political discourse, being carried victorious shoulder high at the Stade de France was nauseating. How Thabu would love a bit of Madiba magic to rub off on his paranoid shoulders in an election year. As the rugby writer Siyabonga Mchunu observed, “it was not the Springboks that needed Mbeki’s support ... It was Mbeki who needed the support of the World Cup champions.” What a farce!

When the Springboks won the cup in 1995, Mhambi was dancing in the streets along with black and white South Africans, brimming with positive hope for the future of our young democracy.

How different it would feel 12 years later. Hlophe, Selebi, Manto and manifold other ghosts haunt our country. Mhambi thought to himself, is this the last time South Africa celebrates, ever? What does this victory mean? Is it but a parting shot? A blip in our terminal decline? After all just the night before the victory reggae star Lucky Dube had been shot.

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Tokio big in Jozi tonight

There's a buzz about Tokio Sexwale's talk at wits University tonight. And no wonder. south Africans would like to have a public debabte about who should be the next president of the country. So far Sexwale has been the only person to publically announce his candidacy AND engage with the public.

Xolela Mangcu says in Business day today :

History tells us that it takes courageous, public-oriented leadership to bring about that adaptive transition into a new world.

In Tokyo Sexwale’s talk at the Wits Great Hall tonight is fully booked. It can be obtained on www.public-con-versations.org.za.

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Mhambi's South Africa 2006

Open debate, Aids, Gays, Poverty

2006 was a watershed year for South Africa. It was a year that saw more open debate than at any time since the all democratic elections of 1994. Why? Because the monolithic ANC dominated political discourse was shattered with the infighting between the Zuma and Mbeki camps.

tragedy in south africa...aids has left a mark (South Africa)
Originally uploaded by Matt'satwwJ.

Deputy president Zuma was of course cleared of a rape charge and then the charge for corruption was withdrawn.

For the first time people and the press felt free to openly question excepted wisdom on many issues. As with most open debate, some times this questioning was good, "should the government not have spent more on the poor?" Sometimes bad: "Why give gays rights?" The specter of political campaigning along ethnic and tribal lines also raised its ugly head.

But one of the most benign effects of this opening up was that it allowed more debate on Mbeki's disastrous Aids policy that has the cost the lives of thousands of South Africans. By year end the government had changed its policy, lets hope they can implement this new policy far wide and fast.

The question remained, was this a sign of a maturing democracy or just an opening up as a consequence of a jostling for power in the ruling party?

De la Rey makes a comeback

It was also the year in which some detected the stirrings of resurgent Afrikaner nationalism and unity. A response to the renaming of towns and cities, crime, corruption, affirmative action and a general sense of exclusion of the once dominant group. This even found expression in phenomena like the extremely popular De la Rey song of a young Afrikaner, Bok van Blerk.

White intellectuals made their voices heard to. In concert authors like Brink and Malan lamented the parlous state of law and order. Malan saw a sad decay, but Brink saw slaughter in the future. Nadine Gordimer was mugged in her home, but she stayed positive, preferring to blame the government for not helping the poor.

The meaning of Africaness

Another intellectual, Van Zyl Slabbert, articulated another new trend that became increasingly visible during the year. The growing racial exclusive ideology that only black South Africans could be African, and not white coloured or asian ones.

It was not just South African white writers that were negative, so too people like UK Guardian South African correspondent Rory Carroll. He never quite fell for South Africa because it "took a sledge hammer to his cherished progressive ideals".

Another Brit, Nick Broomfield, managed to produce both the most entertaining and most out of touch documentary of the year about South Africa, "His big white self".

A booming economy

All this pessimism while one could be forgiven for asking what all the fuss was about - the South African economy appeared in rude health - growing at record levels for a record period. But, the growth has so far been very slow on delivering South African jobs. The rich is getting richer and the poor poorer.

Violence

White trash
Originally uploaded by Hermosdef.

Violence continued across the country as in the past few years. Black South Africans were still more likely to be killed than white ones, usually by other black South Africans and often by somebody they know. If you were foreign and black you were in real danger. Especially Somali business men were targeted in a spate of killings across the country.

PW Botha, the last apartheid defending leader of the country passed away.

There was increasing debate about the countries history. Events like the Battle at Cuito Canavale in Angola are set to become a political battle field going forward.

And it was reported that nearly 800,000 white South Africans had immigrated since 1994. That's nearly 20% of the total.

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The big Zuma debate

transparent
Originally uploaded by max_thinks_sees.

If your a middle or upper class South African, or white, asian, coloured - apparently its time to be worried. A Zuma presidency is looming.

Should they be worried? Can Zuma be so much worse they Mbeki? Can't he be better?

Ah! I hear you say: How can somebody that thinks showering after sex will offer protection againt HIV be President! Huh well... the current President untill very recently denied that HIV caused Aids at all, and still has not thrown his full wait behind combatting the disease. He is responsible for the deaths of thousands of South Africans, more that Adriaan Vlok, the ex apartheid minister of law and order, and arguably in a more direct way. At least Zuma has been contrite and come out strongly that HIV does cause Aids.

Ah, but Zuma is a socialist. Is he? None of his economic utterances have indicated that. South Africa needs some serious government intervention if equality is ever going to be adressed in a meaningfull way. The Mbeki government has been too hands off for too long. A bit more state in this country is exactly what we need. That does not mean it will have to be a socialist state. But a social demoracy that cares for all its citizens according to their needs.

At least Zuma has never been a racialist. Unlike Mbeki who it seems, people forget, has played the race card on more than one occasion.

Mhambi is not saying that Zuma will be good for South Africa. We don't really know. But whether he will be that much worse - well he has he work cut out if he wants to achieve that.

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