http://www.economist.com/node/16953564?story_id=16953564
For lack of time today, an article about the political backlash of the workers' strike in South Africa. It details the relationship between the president and the other major players involved. Even if you aren't interested in the article itself, it is worthwhile to read the comments below.
It's an older article, but it shows the complexity of the situation surrounding the strikes and provides more information about the government than I'm capable of providing (I've yet to get a handle on it although I will say that no one seems to find the government effective. Our big black trash can is labelled with "CAPE TOWN, This city works for you" yet I see the neglect and sense a nagging feeling of abandonment, perhaps especially because of the locations where I'm living and working - the comparisons to Chicago grow in my mind daily yet I'm unable to produce an accurate picture of the state of affairs here and so I'll wait).
You'll remember President Zuma as the man who stated (wildly incorrectly) that avoiding HIV is as easy as showering after sex. You'll also need to know that right now, there is a huge problem of the government attempting to limit freedom of speech when it pertains to criticism of corruption and government. I believe that the vote is happening tomorrow (the 17th of September).
Also, I've posted in "A mile high...and then some" three articles in the past few days about the state of gender affairs both here and in the US. One article links to a New York Times article and the other two are localized to South Africa. I found the two I posted this morning to be especially affecting.
I've included the text to the Economist article below:
With friends like these
"President Jacob Zuma is badly bruised by weeks of crippling strikes"
Sep 2nd 2010
THE public-sector strikes that have paralysed hospitals, schools and other essential services across the country since August 18th have damaged South Africa’s image abroad. They have also undermined relations between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), part of the ruling tripartite alliance, together with the communists. On September 1st Cosatu rejected the latest pay offer from the government, so as The Economist went to press the strikes seemed destined to continue, and even intensify. President Jacob Zuma, who ordered both sides back to the negotiating table on August 30th in a last-ditch attempt to end the strike, has emerged weakened from the fray.
Cosatu, with a membership of 2m, has been feeling increasingly aggrieved since Mr Zuma took over as president 16 months ago. Having helped elevate him to power, the country’s biggest union federation thought that he was their man. Cosatu had expected to play an important role in the new administration. Instead, it has repeatedly found its policies ignored. In June relations reached near breaking-point when the ANC threatened to bring disciplinary proceedings against Cosatu’s leader, Zwelinzima Vavi, for having accused the government of failing to take action against corrupt ministers.
Carrying on the fight against corruption in public life is one of Mr Vavi’s passions. Having already discerned a “tendency” within the ANC that is “hellbent on their agenda of self-enrichment and crass materialism”, he returned to the charge last week, claiming that the whole country was rapidly turning into “a full-blown predator state, in which a powerful, corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas increasingly controls the state as a vehicle for accumulation.”
Rows between the ANC, Cosatu and the communists are nothing new. But the rhetoric has become nastier and more personal of late. A meeting of alliance leaders, to try to sort things out, was due to have been convened immediately after the football World Cup in early July, but still has not taken place.
Mr Vavi says that the alliance is now paralysed. Some analysts believe it may break up. But its demise has often been predicted in the past without ever coming to pass. Much of Cosatu’s power is based on its close relations with the ANC. Its honeymoon with Mr Zuma may be over, but it has no credible alternative left-wing candidate to promote in his place as president.
Another of Mr Zuma’s kingmakers, the powerful ANC Youth League, also appears to have fallen out of love with its former idol. It has been incensed by Mr Zuma’s decision to call its leader, Julius Malema, to book, following a series of particularly outrageous statements by the young firebrand. At an ANC disciplinary hearing in May, Mr Malema was fined 10,000 rand ($1,300) and ordered to attend an anger-management course, for “sowing disunity” within the ANC. The League has demanded the whole proceedings be annulled, while hinting that it may not support the 68-year-old Mr Zuma for a second term.
It is time for a new generation to take over, Mr Malema suggested in an interview last week. “The older people don’t know what the current issues are or how to deal with them. Once older people decide to continue with the old way of doing things, they’re going to become irrelevant.” Mr Malema, meanwhile, advocates what he would doubtless regard as more relevant policies, such as the nationalisation of the country’s mines and the expropriation of white-owned farms at a price to be determined by the government. Land reform has been progressing too slowly, Mr Malema says. It is time to abolish the “willing buyer, willing seller” principle.
It is not only the alliance that is in turmoil. Both the ANC and its Youth League are struggling with their own internal divisions and in-fighting. How much of all this huffing and puffing is part of the normal jostling for position ahead of the ANC’s National General Council later this month, in its turn a preparation for the party’s five-yearly national conference, when a new leadership will be elected, is difficult to tell. But it is not making the government or the party look good in the run up to next year’s local-government elections.
(End of article.)
Comments:
Mekuria wrote: .Zuma is receiving the pay for what he did to Mbeki. COSATU was an ally in toppling Mbeki, but governing is way different than dancing and mobilizing the mob. He promised things he cannot implement in a free market economy, and now his promise is haunting him. It is very disturbing to have a leader who believes taking a shower could provide protection against HIV/Aids at a time when South Africa is suffering an epidemic of this disease. I remember Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu saying that he was disappointed that Zuma would come to power with "a question mark over his head". That is exactly what we are witnessing now. He better leave politics to those who can do it better and take care of his five + wives and fifty something kids. "As you sow, so shall you reap."
Aly-Khan Satchu wrote: The Noise Level that swirls during 'Strike Season' is of a Pitch and Magnitude that puts South Africa in the Outlier Category and it is easy to see a Disjunctive Break where There is just Noise.
Far from harming President Zuma, I think by standing up to COSATU and Julius Malema Esquire, he is asserting the Fact that He is No One's Poodle, which is Political Win for the President.
Plen wrote: Aly-Khan Satchu is right, Zuma is not the poodle of Cosatu or Malema. But watching this whole turn of political events is a disturbing argument between dumb and dumber.
1. On the one side you have a president who’s highest education level is primary school whose actions are disturbing at best. A polygamist who still finds the need to cheat on his 5 wives (has an extra marital child). Besides the stupidity of the HIV shower story, he now believes that the best way to solve corruption is to silence the media. He is a model of incompetence.
2. On the other side you have COSATU who seem admirable in wanting corruption curbed and take to the streets in protest of improved living wages. However, SA’s contribution to civil servants is among the highest in the world and too high for a country with very limited revenue generation. In essence, as difficult as it may be for civil servants to make ends meet, any more increases in salary (above inflation) is outright fiscally irresponsible.
3. Then you throw in Julius Malema (head of the ANC youth League) who openly supports COSATU and angrily shouts down the President. Yet this guy’s statements go beyond outrageous stupidity to down right dangerous. His is the man who openly chants “Kill the White man”, in a country with over 18,000 murders a year and dealing with mending a race divide his chants are very counter productive. But what is the most striking about this idiot is his own level of corruption. He is personally involved in the most scandalous acts of corruption, he wears a cap worth over $1,000 and drives the top of the line Land Rover (he doesn’t have a license) but ironically he joins the COSATU call to decrease corruption and end the government largesse.
All the players in this game cannot for a moment think beyond themselves and fathom the hypocrisyof their actions.
This is shamefully African politics at its worst. When will we see responsible governance take place? Is Botswana (Africa’s oldest democracy) the only bastion of hope?
Lloron wrote: .Vavi has lost control over COSATU. I believe that it has been taken over by hooligan opportunists and anarchists.
One cannot help believing that this is so when one reads about nurses being attacked for attending to their patients. One is in a critical condition in hospital after being beaten by the mob.
Remember Mr Vavi, you have sown the wind and we may be about to reap the whirlwind
mises ghost wrote: .10 years of high tax incomes and the energy system is decrepid. the problem of the anc seems to be not only the endemic corruption, but also the populism: rather than invest in the futuret he leaders seem to buy off voters by populistic measures.
On the other side i do feel optimistic every time I notice the pluralistic view in dominant parties. The ANC might not split up and all the currents might be disgusting, but even so any kind of contest for the power might prove valuble (even if I personally consider the country doomed because of its racial policy)
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