South Africa ’s  Caster Semenya returned home today following her 800m gold medal-win at the  World Athletics Championships in Berlin .

She was greeted by headlines from the country’s newspapers, expressing collective  national pride for her achievement.  “Welcome home, Caster, our champ. Caster, this nation is proud of you and we stand behind you, from Cape Town to Musina.”, screamed  the Johannesburg-based The Times Newspaper.

Her achievement should give hope to those South Africans in the far flung and unnoticed rural areas who want to be top achievers that they too can be champions.  Caster, who was born in a small village of Ga-Masehlong , has overcome a number of obstacles  in getting to where she is today -  hopefully her triumph will inspire her country to honour her.

There have been calls for government to rename the new South African public transport system, the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT), after her.  A lot is also expected from corporate South African to offer her incentives and rewards for making her country proud in Berlin .

There  is talk in some quarters that the great honour for Caster should come from President Jacob Zuma, who has promised to fight poverty and improve the lives of all South Africans. They say Zuma should ensure that Caster is removed from poverty. The state should see to it that Caster receives some monetary  reward for her achievement.

Afterall,  it would not be the first time that excellence is rewarded with money. In neighbouring Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe awarded $100,000 to Zimbabwean Kirsty Coventry for winning a gold medal at Beijing Olympics swimming events.

Caster deserves something from this nation,  and as The Times summed it up: “Her achievement is the greatest single sporting achievement by South African women on track, and it might be the greatest ever in all disciplines.”

Is a  handshake from the president and applause from South Africans enough for  South Africa ’s newest sporting heroine?

Poor South Africans have called upon newly elected president Jacob Zuma to keep his election promises on service delivery. The past week has seen a number of protests flaring up across South Africa against what protesters called poor service delivery.

In one township in the country’s Mpumalanga province residents barricaded the entire township, burning tyres, throwing stones at policemen and calling for the head of the local mayor, whom they described as “good for nothing”. “There is no development. You can see for yourself,” one resident told journalists. He spoke of alleged neglect and apparent self enrichment from local government officials.

Locals also complained about being “overlooked” for jobs in the local municipalities in favour of people from outside.

Demonstrations lasted nearly the whole day on Wednesday 22nd July. Later in the afternoon the local municipal council came to address the crowds who-for-a-while refused to listen to their elected officials. One thing they wanted clarified was whether their brothers and sisters- arrested during the last two days of protests would be released before they could listen to whatever the town council’s meeting had concluded. Ninety-nine residents had been taken into police custody.

Siyathemba Township is but one example of this recent surge in protests against perceived lack of service delivery. The challenges of getting access to water and sanitation facilities, health care, employment, and electricity fifteen years into democratic South Africa are being brought up, albeit via the protests.

The residents in Siyathemba said they want Zuma to act on non-performing government officials. Do these protests suggest that poor South Africans are exercising their democratic right by speaking out on non performing government officials? Does the South African government simply view these protestors as unruly and unemployed youths who are out to damage the reputation of the country and Zuma? Or does national government pressure  local and provincial governments to deliver on their elections mandate?

South African President Jacob Zuma has a tough balancing act to perform as he begins his term in office.

 On the one hand, Zuma is anxious to assure investors that there will be continuity in the economic policies that have secured the country’s status as the regional powerhouse.

On the other, he has to address the increasingly vocal demands of his allies in the labour movement, whose support propelled him first to the leadership of the ruling ANC and then to the country’s top government job after April 22 elections.

But what the unions want - increased social spending to cushion their members against the ravages to the global recession that has now also landed in South Africa - would mean veering away from the prudent fiscal stance that has ironically cushioned the country from the worst of the world crisis.

Investors are also keen to see whether Zuma bows to pressure not to renew the contract of central bank Governor Tito Mboweni, loved by financial markets but vilified by unions that say a pre-occupation with inflation targeting has seen the Reserve Bank maintain a tight monetary policy at the expense of economic growth, impoverishing millions.

Can Zuma please one side without alienating the other? And if it comes down to choice, will the President opt to sacrifice his alliance with the Left to maintain South Africa’s international standing? How essential is union support for his success as President and can the ANC stay in power without it?

Recent events in South Africa have sent some conflicting signals to investors about sovereign risks. On the one hand there was some regulatory flip-flopping over the Vodacom listing given objections from the union organisation COSATU, which raised questions about the influence of unions in Jacob Zuma’s administration. On the other hand the sovereign issuing some $1.5 billion was highly successful and oversubscribed.

With Zuma recently elected on a platform of change for his domestic audience and continuation of old policies when speaking to investors, there is a raft of new ministers and new ministries and quite a bit of policy uncertainty. No foreign investor will deny South Africa’s need to address serious social problems of inequality, housing, jobs and education through a more developmental state agenda.

However investors I speak to simply want to see that this is not at the expense of the productive sectors of the economy. This agenda will naturally involve the ANC’s allies: COSATU and SACP (communist party).  As such, the process of governing will be a noisy affair for investors. I put the Vodacom incident down to such noise.

However I believe the new Zuma administration will find itself heavily constrained by the need to raise funds for its agenda and so keep investors onside as the government’s borrowing requirement balloons. Add state owned enterprises engaging in very necessary investment, and a current account deficit and you arrive at a funding requirement north of  500 billion rand for the next two years.

This will act as a strong rationalising influence though a backup overdraft in the form of an IMF flexible credit lending facility would be a benefit.  It also should not be forgotten that there is still a strong business influence in the cabinet and the ANC from the likes of Cyril Ramaphosa and Tokyo Sexwale.  Most investors buy the case of policy not shifting sharply to the left, though a lot of questions have been planted in the minds of investors.

Keeping the different factions in his cabinet in line will be key for Zuma’s success, especially with two new hurdles looming: the Bharti/MTN and the Xstrata/Anglo American mergers. Both are sensitive and likely to be jumped on by unions.  The inflation-targeting debate is also being reopened locally — a topic foreign investors love to discuss.

It is now up to Zuma and his team to deliver on prudent macro-policy as well as his developmental state priorities in order to sustain the current goodwill from investors.  It is still early days for his administration. We hope not to be disappointed — for South Africa’s sake as much as anyone elses.

Peter Attard Montalto is emerging market economist at Nomura International.

South African opposition leader Helen Zille has not endeared herself to the majority of voters who recently handed the ruling African National Congress a landslide victory in the national polls.

Zille came under fire from her political enemies for her appointment of a predominantly white and almost completely male cabinet in the Western Cape, the province where her DA party took power from the ANC.

She retaliated by attacking President Jacob Zuma, calling him a “self-confessed womaniser with deeply sexist views, who put all his wives at risk by having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman”.

That referred to Zuma’s acknowledgement that he had such contact during a trial on rape charges of which he was acquitted. The row has ended any suggestion that after Zuma’s election, there might be a period of better relations between the government and opposition.

ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe , said Zille has “elevated herself from being the leader of the official opposition to being the enemy”.

Quite apart from the name-calling, the row also looks as though it could distract attention from the opposition’s own efforts to present itself as an alternative to the ANC.

It is not the first time that South Africa’s opposition has found itself caught in a war of words with the ANC rather than showing what it will do differently.

Zille’s opponents say she is still to answer the question over the gender and racial balance in her Western Cape cabinet. Does that matter? What will it mean for her chances of winning over voters from the black African majority, who so clearly backed the ANC in the election? What will it mean for South Africa’s prospects if the government and main opposition are so quickly at each other’s throats?

Thousands of South Africans danced, cheered and sang hymns to celebrate President Jacob Zuma’s swearing in. Zuma, they said, as a man of the people, would give them houses and electricity, fight AIDS and crime, and ensure prosperity even as South Africa is on the brink of its first recession in 17 years.

But appointments to key ministries have raised questions over how well the new government will function.

Economic policy is seen intact after largely expected changes at finance-related ministries, but appointments to some other key sectors, including mining, energy and telecommunications left more doubts.

Siphiwe Nyanda, the newly appointed minister of communications, has been a military man, yet outside the African National Congress (ANC) and defence he is something of a mystery. He now takes over communications, a crucial ministry with oversight of Telkom, Africa’s biggest telecoms firm.

Dipuo Peters qualified in social work, but has been chosen to lead the energy ministry and help tackle the country’s power shortages that have led to a five-day shutdown of South Africa’s mining industry and crippled the country’s investor-friendly image.

“It appears this is South Africa’s tradition to appoint a minister who has no technical qualifications whatsoever,” said independent analyst Andrew Kenny.

Barbara Hogan, who has led the health ministry for the past six months, has been moved to oversee the public enterprise department, also in charge of sorting out structural problems at state-owned utility Eskom, which now supplies some 95 percent of the country’s power.

Analysts welcomed the split of the energy and mining ministry into two entities, saying it would allow for better focus on the challenges at hand, especially in view of the economic slowdown. They say that while political motives could have motivated individual appointments, the eventual success of each entity will depend on the ministers’ leadership skills and ability to appoint the right people around them.

Zuma appointed Susan Shabangu, who has only held deputy ministerial positions before, as mining minister in the world’s top source of platinum and No. 3 gold producer. She came to prominence as deputy security minister last year when she advised police dealing with criminals: “You must kill the bastards if they threaten you or the community. You must not worry about the regulations.”

Some say it is too soon to speculate on how the ministers will do. The ministers need to be given the benefit of the doubt for now, they say. The first 100 days in office may indicate whether or not they will push for change and deliver on the promises made. What do you expect?

William Gumede

South Africa’s national elections last week have reshaped the contours of the country’s political landscape. It has almost certainly killed off the careers of many opposition leaders who have become institutions and their parties with them. It virtually obliterated the peer parties of the ANC, with their roots as liberation movements, such as the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the Azanian Peoples’ Organisation (Azapo). It is clear the electorate believes these parties are irrelevant, outdated and under poor leadership. The Inkatha Freedom Party, whose founder, Mangosuthu Buthelezi also professed that it has its origins in liberation movement politics has also been brought down to size.

 The IFP has dominated the KwaZulu Natal province since the 1960s, but embarrassingly lost out to the ANC now. ANC President Jacob Zuma’s overt appeal to Zulu speakers in the province who have supported the IFP in the past, by arguing that is better to support him (Zuma) for the presidency, and have a Zulu-speaker in the presidency, has evidently worked. Many IFP supporters have voted for Zuma merely on the basis of ethnic affinity, rather than his record in government.

 But this strategy also run the risks of increasing ethnic divisions, with some Zuma supporters already whispering for the ‘Xhosa-Nostra’ to be purged from government. This is a reference to individuals who were allies of former President Thabo Mbeki, are Xhosa speakers or who are from the Eastern Cape province from where Mbeki and former President Nelson Mandela hail.

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Pledging to work for national unity is pretty much a formality for any election winner, but in the case of South Africa’s Jacob Zuma it may be more than a platitude. It may need to be.

“The new President of the Republic will be a president for all, and he will work to unite the country around a programme of action that will see an improvement in the delivery of services,” Zuma said after the African National Congress won its sweeping victory.

“We may disagree on how to bring about a better life for all, but what unites us is the fact that this country belongs to all of us, black, white, coloured and Indian equally. We will need to work together on issues that are in the national interest, on which there is no need to compete or permanently bicker.”

Despite the strongest opposition challenge since the end of apartheid, the slick ANC campaign delivered the vote and persuaded a majority of South Africans that the party that has ruled since 1994 could also be the one to deliver change – more action against poverty, crime, AIDS and other concerns.

But unity is always going to be tough in a country with as many divisions as South Africa. The formerly monolithic ANC itself split last year after it ousted former President Thabo Mbeki.

The vote clearly showed up the racial divide 15 years after the end of rule by the white minority.

The vast majority of black Africans had clearly voted for the ANC, whose credentials are still strong for ending apartheid. The voters included those in KwaZulu Natal province, where the Inkatha Freedom Party used to be dominant. Zuma, a son of the soil, definitely helped the party win more votes there.

Coloured and white minorities, however, opted heavily for the opposition Democratic Alliance, which won convincingly in the Western Cape province, where they make up the biggest proportion of the population. Led by Helen Zille, a white woman, the Democratic Alliance has had little success winning over black African voters.

Zuma made great efforts to charm South Africans of all colours before the election, making a particular effort to woo Afrikaners. He also appeared to want to make it more of a priority than Mbeki.

But South Africa’s communities still live their lives very much apart, even if the emergence of a growing black middle class means the divisions along wealth lines no longer correlate as precisely with race as they once did.

When he takes office, Zuma will face demands from all sides – from those who want a greater share of the wealth and more opportunities and from those who feel they are politically marginalised. What could Zuma do to unite South Africa? Can he succeed? Does unity really matter for South Africa anyway?

Pictures: A young ANC supporter waves a flag during victory celebrations in Johannesburg, April 24, 2009. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille is mobbed by supporters as she arrives at Cape Town’s airport. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

 
Dr Sehlare Makgetlaneng is the coordinator of the Africa Institute of South Africa’s South African 2009 Election Observation and Monitoring Team. He writes in his personal capacity.

The Zuma administration’s foreign policy will be determined to a great extent by the struggle to satisfy national needs and demands.  These can best be understood if we take into account not only the country’s  increasing level of corruption and violent crime, but also high  level of  expectations  from the urban and rural unemployed, the poor and the working class expecting the qualitative improvement in their material conditions.
     
The Zuma administration will commit itself in practice to the value of continuity in South Africa’s foreign policy. Central to this tradition will be popular foreign policy objectives pursued by South Africa since the end of apartheid.
     
They include support for peaceful resolution of conflict on the African continent and beyond, support for the regional and continental organisations and integration as well as multilateralism. It will continue with the country’s practical and theoretical call for continental socio-political and economic renaissance or transformation.
     
South Africa under the leadership of Thabo Mbeki used the African Renaissance to contribute towards the resolution of conflicts in African countries conducive for the operations of its capital and the realisation of the objectives of its socio-economic policy objectives.
     
It regarded its active participation in conflict resolution as key to peace, security and stability in Africa. It viewed continental socio-economic transformation or renaissance as the process to be achieved through peace and stability creation and consolidation, actions against corruption and implementation of socio-economic policies conducive for the operations of foreign investment.
     
The Mbeki administration was reluctant to lead Africa in international relations. It called for a further integration of Africa into the global capitalist system and African solidarity and unity to fight what Mbeki refers to as global apartheid and to contribute towards an equitable world.
     
These two central aspects of South Africa’s foreign policy, focusing firstly on Africa and secondly on developed countries, raised high level of expectations within Africa and the rest of the world and placed its policy on grounds vulnerable to criticism from individuals with different positions and interests in its efforts to serve as a leader of Africa in its transformation and its relations with the rest of the world particularly developed countries.
     
These problems are a dilemma it faced in its attempts to serve as the representative of Africa to the developed countries and the representative of developed countries in Africa. This policy helped to explain why South Africa under Mbeki was unable to substantiate its declared theoretical position on African Renaissance in practice. It impelled it not to antagonise developed countries in its African Renaissance project and to seek support from weak African countries.
     
Under Mbeki, South Africa put itself on the level that Africa expected more than it could deliver in resolving Africa’s problems.
     
It pretended that it could meet requirements of this expectation. It did not substantiate Mbeki’s progressive position that its role in the resolution of the African conflicts should be guided by the struggle to achieve African transformation in the interests of the masses of the people. South Africa remained central to the consolidation of dominance of Africa by developed countries.
     
The Zuma administration will be a substantial and welcome addition to the struggle against Africa’s problems.
     
It will use the country as the regional and continental power to criticise African leaders who are enemies of their people and strive for free, independent exercise of foreign policy.
     
There will be a shift in the direction towards South Africa realising its potential as a centre of independent development on the African continent.
     
It will be under enormous internal progressive pressure to ensure that the country constitutes a strategic continental threat to the internal and external interests inimical to the interests of the continent and its people.

Jacob Zuma is cruising towards the South African presidency and the main question now is the size of the ANC’s majority.

So what do people from other African countries think of the man who will take over the continent’s most powerful economy?

Reuters Africa Journal asked a few.

“South Africa is one of the biggest democracies that we have and I have got a lot of confidence in their election process and what I think about Zuma,” said Phaenius Mushayi from Harare.

“I think Zuma is a very integral leader. I mean he has been there in ANC and he has stood behind the people, he has stood for the people and a lot of people have confidence in him.”

Another resident of the Zimbabwean capital, Mbuso Makodza, took a less rosy view.

“I think the future of South Africa, for me, they have got a lot of challenges. Of course they have got the independence in terms of ruling, but in terms of the economy, the economy is still controlled by a lot of whites and I still believe the
black man doesn’t have a say in the economy.

“Those who have got a say are the people who have benefited from black economic empowerment, and it has benefited just a few people.”

Two residents of Nairobi were pretty optimistic about prospects for South Africa under Zuma.

“When I look at South Africa I wouldn’t be so much worried about their future because they have weathered a lot of storms in the past,” said Steve Onganga.

And this was Joyce Awino’s view: “Zuma, I’m happy because I know he’s going to win and he’s going to bring the country to be a change. So that is why we are happy ….”

So, in an admittedly unscientific survey of the view from Africa, that’s three in favour and one not so sure. Who is right?