Africa News blog
African business, politics and lifestyle
Is Zuma home and dry after Malema’s expulsion?
By Cosmas Butunyi
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress may have expelled the rubble-rousing youth league president, Julius Malema, but challenges still remain for President Jacob Zuma, who is seeking a second term in a race that he is considered the frontrunner.
Observers say that Malema, who is considered one of the most prominent members of the party to openly break from Zuma, still can be a thorn in his side even though he is permanently barred from party-related events. He may use his expulsion to sharpen his criticism against Zuma’s government.
Zakhele Ndlovu, a political analyst at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, says that while numerous predictions are being made of a possible Zuma victory in December, ‘anything can happen’ due to the changing balance of power in the party.
“People who sympathise with him could become influential and bring him back,” Zakhele told Reuters.
It is nearly impossible for Malema to return to the party before its electoral meeting at the end of the year. He would first need the approval of the ANC’s National Executive Committee, which is led by Zuma and stacked with his supporters. Even if he were to win over the NEC, Malema does not have the support of ANC delegates now to win reinstatement.
Was South Africa right to deny Dalai Lama a visa?
By Isaac Esipisu
Given that China is South Africa’s biggest trading partner and given the close relationship between Beijing and the ruling African National Congress, it didn’t come as a huge surprise that South Africa was in no hurry to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama.
Tibet’s spiritual leader will end up missing the 80th birthday party of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a fellow Nobel peace prize winner. He said his application for a visa had not come through on time despite having been made to Pretoria several weeks earlier. (Although South Africa’s government said a visa hadn’t actually been denied, the Dalai Lama’s office said it appeared to find the prospect inconvenient). Desmond Tutu said the government’s action was a national disgrace and warned the President and ruling party that one day he will start praying for the defeat of the ANC government.
It’s the second time the Dalai Lama has been unable to honour an invitation to South Africa by Tutu after failing to make it to a meeting in 2010.
South Africa will certainly win more plaudits in Beijing, which last week agreed to $2.5 billion in investment projects with during a visit by South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe.
But pro-Tibet activists say South Africa is undermining its credentials as a country of freedom and democracy, established after the end of white minority rule a generation ago.
So what if the world community had ignored apartheid for all those years? Now what country has the guts to stand up for some principles or is that no longer important to them?
New hope for Zimbabwe?
Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change has agreed to join a unity government with President Robert Mugabe, breaking a crippling deadlock four months after the political rivals reached a power-sharing deal.
The decision could improve Zimbabwe’s prospects of recovering from economic collapse and easing a humanitarian crisis in which more than 60,000 people have been infected by cholera and more than half the population needs food aid.
Zimbabweans have long wished for a new leadership that can ease the world’s highest inflation rate and severe food, fuel and foreign currency shortages. Millions have fled the suffering to neighbouring countries, straining regional economies.
Western aid and financial assistance tied to the creation of a democratic government and economic reform could be crucial to rescuing what was once one of Africa’s most promising countries.
South Africa’s President Kgalema Motlanthe was optimistic and told Reuters in Davos that his country would help rebuild Zimbabwe.
But Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga cast doubt on whether the deal would work and said President Mugabe must go.
Will this decision work? Will it bring change and help ease the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans? What do you think?
Not one of the above comments urging Mugabe to step down or the SADC to push him seems to have the slightest idea of political realities on the ground in Zimbabwe.
Whether you like it or not Mugabe is the head of parliament’s biggest single party faction – according to the credible March 2008 parliamentary poll – and continues to enjoy the support of the security chiefs.
The MDC has to work with him to alleviate the immediate humanitarian crisis. That is the priority – not the self-aggrandizing ‘get tough’ prescriptions proposed by the contributors above whose adoption by the west has resulted in a) zero political change and b) catalysed social and economic collapse.
This is not to remove ultimate responsibility from Mugabe. But it is time for armchair critics to grow up and, more crucially, for the MDC to get smart. Once in power they must expand their political space within state institutions, including ‘levelling the playing field’ ahead of the next presidential poll.
Any chance of free and fair elections and Mugabe will be pushed out beforehand; ZANU PF instincts for self-preservation trump those of (misguided) loyalty.
