Maravi

(NEWZIMBABWE, BBC) Zuma 'can't change direction of Titanic'

COMMENT - The knifes are out for Jacob Zuma. This is what this otherwise inexplicable attention to 'corrective rape of lesbians' is about (of course, always given without statistical backup, just emotions). They tried to go after president Mbeki for his - completely warranted and vindicated - AIDS scepticism. They are trying the same emotional/sexual angle with President Zuma. At the same time, Cynthia Carroll, who oversaw the ousting of Nicky Oppenheimer from De Beers (the most important company in South Africa) has also lost her job. Coincidence, or a wholesale change of scenery? By the way, this article is an editorial, not journalism.

Zuma 'can't change direction of Titanic'
29/10/2012 00:00:00
by James Harding I BBC

After the most damaging months that South Africa's economy has experienced in two decades – with foreign investment and confidence shrinking alarmingly (and perhaps excessively) following the Marikana killings and subsequent industrial unrest – President Jacob Zuma had come to address the world's media at a televised breakfast meeting in Johannesburg.

Zuma walked into a room bristling – if that is possible – with silence and scepticism. Perhaps we should draw a polite curtain over the president's opening remarks.

Zuma has always struggled to deliver written speeches – excusable perhaps given that English is his second language, and his education was curtailed by the fight against apartheid – but the dreary listing of the African National Congress's achievements since 1994 and a handful of bland generalisations about industrial relations hardly seemed calibrated for the occasion.

An opportunity to generate some positive headlines abroad was sleepily squandered.

Then came the more feisty question-and-answer session. But again, rather than selling his vision of the way forward for South Africa, Zuma chose to focus almost exclusively on his trademark tactic – wounded defensiveness.

Those who were criticising South Africa, were simply misunderstanding it: The "mishap of Marikana" was a "surprise to everyone", he said, but it did not represent a "tipping point" for the country - coming close to contradicting his vice-president and rival Kgalema Motlanthe - and it is "wrong to exaggerate" or call the situation "a crisis".

Strikes, he pointed out quite reasonably, were a by-product of democracy.

As for the corruption and infighting within the ruling ANC, Zuma again suggested that outsiders were missing the point.

His administration had done more than any other to fight corruption, and the infighting was a healthy sign of the ANC's democratic processes at work.

In the past, Zuma has urged the public to stop blaming the legacy of apartheid for all of modern South Africa's ills.
But on Monday, he seemed to begin most answers with a history lesson and a plea for his country's special status.

Overall it was an unsurprisingly uninspiring performance – defensive, short on details or any new policy initiatives; the performance, you might say, of a chairman rather than a leader.

But Zuma's central point – that South Africa is not in a state of crisis – has a certain inconvenient truth to it.

I say "inconvenient" truth because, like the old story about the frog in the pot of water that does not notice he is in danger, South Africa seems to have learned to live with its problems – an unwieldy political alliance between the ANC, trade unions and the Communist Party, massive corruption, a collapsing education system, inequality, a shrinking tax base and expanding welfare system and some of the most protective labour laws in the world.

[Massive corruption - does James Harding have anything to back that up? And a 'collapsing education system' - from where, the great educational past that was 'Bantu Education'? The writer is stretching it, and I want to know why. - MrK]

And so, instead of being confronted with a sudden crisis that prompts real change, South Africa appears to be drifting – sustained by an expanding middle class and buoyant local economy – while the water in the pot keeps getting steadily hotter.

I am not a pessimist. South Africa remains an extraordinary country with huge mineral reserves, a history of proving the sceptics wrong, plenty of achievements to boast of, and the potential to transform itself.

But it is hard to live here and not feel the keen absence of a charismatic leader – someone to pull the country behind him, or her.

Perhaps it is worth ending with what sounded like a presidential Freudian slip, as Zuma was chatting to journalists after his main remarks.

South Africa's government was an unwieldy ship to steer, he suggested, "You cannot change direction overnight. It's like the Titanic."

Labels: BBC, JACOB ZUMA

posted by MrK @ 6:55 PM