It’s one of the biggest ironies in South African politics -- the most loyal ANC voters are often those the party appears to have let down most bitterly.

For millions of poor, mostly black South Africans, life has barely changed since the African National Congress defeated apartheid under Nelson Mandela in 1994.

Year after year, they wait for the new house, the job, the running water and electricity, the decent education for their children that the ANC has promised. For many, that never comes. Yet most will still vote for ANC and its leader Jacob Zuma in an election next week.

The poorest residents of Munsieville, a township on the edge of Johannesburg, illustrate the contradiction.

Unemployed and tired of living crammed into one-room shacks with no running water or electricity, they are quick to list the ways their government has failed them.

Hundreds share one water tap, which sits next to a stinking mound of rubbish where dirt-smudged children play and stray dogs scavenge for food. They dig pits for toilets.

Many say they have languished for years at the bottom of waiting lists for decent housing. They were left behind while others enjoyed a decade of continuous economic growth that created a burgeoning black middle class.

Yet almost all recoiled in horror at any suggestion they vote against the ANC.

"Half a loaf of bread is better than no bread," said 24-year-old single mother Rahab Modise, wringing out her family's washing in front of her shack. "The ANC is going to help us. They are taking a long time, but I still hope they will come one day."

It’s thanks to people like Modise that the ANC is virtually ensured of winning next week's election despite a challenge from a new breakaway party and a string of corruption scandals.

But why do those who have gained so little display such unwavering loyalty?

Analysts say that until other parties such as the newly formed Congress of the People (COPE), formed by disgruntled ANC politicians, or the Democratic Alliance learn to identify with the poor, the ruling party will face little in the way of real opposition.

"Irrespective of how bad service delivery gets, the poor still think the ANC represents them," said Ebrahim Fakir, a political analyst at the Electoral Institute of South Africa. "The ANC's image fits with what they see when they look in the mirror."

Part of the appeal lies in the ANC’s freedom-fighter credentials.

COPE’s presidential candidate Mvume Dandala put it in simple terms during a recent township walkabout in a township.

“It's like an abused wife -- you get beaten every day but you keep going back to this man. and deep in your mind there's some thing that says, were it not for this man I would probably never have been married.”

Zuma, a polygamist who enlivens rallies by kicking his legs in the air and dancing on stage, has helped cultivate that image.

He sings struggle-era songs to remind voters of the time he spent in jail on Robben Island alongside Mandela and hails from a rural area of the nation’s poorest province.

Rising to president-in waiting despite having no formal education, Zuma’s own life embodies the rags-to-riches fairytale many dream of, and when he pledges new houses, many believe him.

"We like Zuma because he's one of us," said Vuyo Tsotso, 26, who makes about 10 rand ($1) a day selling scrap wiring. "Zuma will give us grants and build houses. The ANC saved our lives because of what they did in 1994," he said.

But there are also hints of change in Munsieville that suggest the ANC's grip on power will not last forever, with a few younger voters expressing a willingness to at least consider other parties.

One had already decided to vote for the DA, headed by a white woman, Helen Zille -- an option he had previously dismissed because of South Africa's troubled racial past.

"Since 1994 the ANC has been making empty promises," said Philemon Rakuba, 23. "They say a better life for all, but they're the only ones living better while we're still stuck here, and still voting for them."

What do you think? Why do the ANC and Zuma command such loyalty from South Africa’s poor? Will the party always be able to count on such unwavering support?

Exotic animals trapped in net of Mexican drug trade - From the live snakes that smugglers stuff with packets of cocaine to the white tigers drug lords keep as exotic pets, rare animals are being increasingly sucked into Mexico’s deadly narcotics trade.

End of an era for the Amazon’s turbulent priests - They avoid taking buses, make sure friends know their schedules, and rarely go out when it’s dark. For the three foreign-born Roman Catholic bishops under death threat in Brazil’s northeastern state of Para, speaking out against social ills that plague this often-lawless area at the Amazon River’s mouth has come at a price.

West risks repeating Soviet mistakes in Afghanistan - The foreign warplanes swooped in just as the Afghan village of Ali Mardan was celebrating a wedding. Bombs slammed into the crowded village square, killing 30 men, women and children. After the smoke cleared and the dead were buried, all the able-bodied men left alive took up arms against the invaders. That was 1982…

Drought starts to bite in northern Kenya - Clouds of dust rising above the harsh scrub herald the arrival of more livestock at a borehole in northeastern Kenya, the end for some of a 45 km (28 mile) trek for water that must be repeated every few days. Drought is starting to bite into east Africa’s biggest economy and the government says 10 million people may face hunger and starvation.

World’s largest wetland threatened in Brazil - Jaguars still roam the world’s largest wetland Hyacinth Macaws nest in its trees, but advancing farms and industries are destroying Brazil’s Pantanal region at an alarming rate. “It’s a type of Noah’s Ark but it risks running aground,” biologist and tourist guide Elder Brandao de Oliveira says of the Pantanal.

Indonesian city grapples with quake threat - Remember the name Padang. Geologists say this Indonesian city of 900,000 people may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake. “Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake,” said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute.

‘Protest TV’ tries to bring down Georgian leader - It’s been dubbed “Protest TV”. A man in an improvised prison cell under the 24-hour gaze of television cameras, promising to stay put until Georgia’s president quits. Four cameras and a microphone on the ceiling capture his every shuffling move and political rant.  An edited version is broadcast in the evening, before Gachechiladze goes live all night, often with guests.

U.S. farmland fetches top dollar despite recession - On a chilly day in January, more than 200 investors gathered in west central Illinois to haggle over 4,000 acres of prime farmland called the Kilton Farm in the heart of U.S. Corn Belt. The auction came during the most depressing climate for the U.S. economy in decades. But when the hammer fell…

Sunken Green treasures at risk from scuba looters - A corroded mechanism recovered by sponge divers from a sunken wreck near the Greek island of Antikythera in 1902 changed the study of the ancient world.  Hundreds more wrecks beneath the eastern Mediterranean may contain treasures, but a new law opening Greece’s coastline to scuba diving has experts worried that priceless artifacts could disappear into the hands of treasure hunters.

In the north, Afghans fight hunger, not the Taliban - The United States’ decision to send more troops to Afghanistan will mean little to the people of northern Sang-i-Khel village, whose fight is not against Taliban insurgents but against hunger. “Life is not good. There was nothing last year. No water. No wheat. If there is no water this year, I will have to leave…”

Earlier this month, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argued that Africa needs Western countries to cut long term aid that has brought dependency, distorted economies and fuelled bureaucracy and corruption. The comments on the blog posting suggested that many readers agreed. In a response, Savio Carvalho, Uganda country director for aid agency Oxfam GB, says that aid can help the continent escape poverty - if done in the right way:

In early January, I travelled to war-ravaged northern Uganda to a dusty village in Pobura and Kal parish in Kitgum District. We were there to see the completion of a 16km dirt road constructed by the community with support from Oxfam under an EU-funded programme.

The road is bringing benefits in the form of access to markets, education and health care. Some parents say their daughters feel safer walking to school on the road instead of through the bushes. Many families have used the wages earned from construction work to pay for school fees and medical treatment. This is the impact of aid.

Having lived and worked in east Africa, I have witnessed the positive effects of aid. But done badly, it can be very limiting and even has the potential to create more harm. To avoid this, it must be provided within an enabling environment in which it is used as a catalyst for change and not as an end in itself. Governments must show leadership through an accountable system.

For individuals, access to resources – including aid - is like an investment. Aid can build up poor people’s assets, support good governance and enhance skills and capacities to bring about transformation. But it can become a bane when it makes communities dependent, lazy and hopeless. Governments, aid agencies and the United Nations need to ensure the delivery of aid is well planned and coordinated, leading to higher self-reliance among poor communities.

Aid is also beneficial when trade is fair. There are several examples in Africa, like the case of coffee farmers in Uganda, where aid has been used effectively to improve the overall quality of the coffee seeds, thereby giving farmers better prices for their produce. When they have access to markets at home and abroad, they generate income which is ploughed back into increased output, better access to health and education, and overall improvement in the quality of their lives. To make this happen, developed countries need to stop procrastinating and put in place fair trade practices.

Aid works well if governments are accountable – in other words, when they are responsible and encourage active citizenship. On this continent, civil society is still weak and needs to be nourished. But stopping aid will not resolve frustrations about poor governance, which is partly a result of weak public scrutiny. Aid should be used to help fight corruption and promote accountability through active input from ordinary people.

As I have argued here, receiving aid is not just an act of charity. It should be understood as the right of poor communities to a life of dignity. As stated in international conventions, people have a right to good health, food, water and education. We all need to ensure the planet’s resources are equitably distributed. As Mahatma Gandhi said, you must be the change you want to see in the world.

So what do you think? Which argument is most convincing?

Given that the leaders of the world's most firmly capitalist countries are splashing around unprecedented billions to nationalise banks, prop up industry and try to get economies moving, it might seem churlish for anyone to question South Africa's ruling ANC for planning to spend a bit more freely.

This weekend, the African National Congress set out its election manifesto priorities of creating jobs and improving education and health - promises interpreted by many as marking a generally leftward shift under the leadership of president in waiting Jacob Zuma.

But the plan raises the questions of how the spending will be paid for and how dramatic a shift to the left there will be - of major interest to investors as well as South Africans.

"Zuma did not attach a price tag to the manifesto, but ANC leaders privately admit, to allay fears of a tax hike, that it would be too costly to implement," said this article in the Sunday Independent.

Africa's biggest economy has grown significantly since the end of apartheid in 1994, although the dynamism had started to falter even before the global financial crisis spread gloom around the world.

South Africa's poor and its workers had long complained that the benefits were not being shared around fairly and that only those in a new elite were thriving. The leadership under Zuma, widely expected to become president this year, was always going to be under pressure for more social spending from the ANC grassroots and the party's union and Communist Party allies.

The pressure may have increased further with the emergence of the new COPE party after the ousting of President Thabo Mbeki. Although COPE's electoral impact is uncertain and it has not yet spelled out its policies clearly, the fact that close allies of Mbeki are behind it has suggested it is likely to align more with the former president's stance, seen as 'pro-business'.

Zuma has always been at great pains to spell out to business leaders and foreign investors that there would be no dramatic changes under his rule. Flight of investment could further weaken the rand, mean job losses just at the moment when the ANC wants to create more and force up government borrowing costs.

That could make it even harder to finance populist pledges without resorting to measures that might create even more financial instability.

This article in South Africa's Times raised questions over the ANC's plans for the central bank and whether that would damage its standing as a pillar of macroeconomic stability seen as vital for growth.

It is certainly going to be a very tricky time. How substantial do you think any shift to the left is and would it be for the best? If conflicting promises have been made to different interest groups then which are going to be met? Can they all? If not, then what will be the reaction of those who feel disappointed?

(Picture: President of the ruling African National Congress Jacob Zuma dances on stage at his party's election campaign launch. Reuters)

It is ironic that 30 years after they gave birth to the reforms that transformed China into an economic powerhouse, the country’s vast hinterlands are still dogged by poverty.

The breathtaking growth of the economy since the pro-market reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping has led to an extraordinary increase in real living standards and an unprecedented decline in poverty. According to World Bank estimates, more than 60 percent of the population lived under the $1 per day poverty line at the beginning of economic reform. This had fallen to 10 percent by 2004, so - on this narrow measure at least - about 500 million people were lifted out of poverty in a single generation.

“Only development makes hard sense,” said President Hu Jintao in a December 18 speech to mark the anniversary of reform, reviving a slogan that Deng used to spur on investment and spending. 

And yet vast swathes of China’s countryside were bypassed by the economic boom that transformed its cities and eastern seaboard. Agriculture now accounts for only about one-tenth of China’s GDP even though it supports more than half the population.

Much of the rural poverty problem in China can be traced to the inadequacy of the land reform introduced after 1978 and the fact that, even today, rural land is still legally under “collective” ownership. 

Although collectivised farming was replaced by a system that assigned 30-year, non-transferable land-use contracts to households, peasants were not given marketable ownership rights to the land they farmed or the freedom to use it as security on which to borrow and invest. Worse, land was not necessarily allocated to the most efficient farmers and the vast majority worked on so-called “noodle strip” patches that were too small for economies of scale. One of the biggest failings of the de-collectivised system, however, was that it did not shield farmers from the threat of expropriation by officialdom, a major disincentive to investment.

This led to local governments exploiting the countryside as a source of money and power, with the weak legal foothold that farmers had on their land only making life easier for unscrupulous and corrupt officials. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Xiaobo Zhang in a speech “land is being grabbed at a fraction of its market value for supposed public purposes, and then being provided to private investors to promote local economic growth”.

The rights and legal weakness problems associated with rural land have persisted until today, in large part because of ideological taboos in Beijing.

Conservatives have clung to the view that the state should retain control of arable land, allocating it for the greater egalitarian good. Reformers, on the other hand, have been too weak to challenge a central tenet on which the legitimacy of the Communist Party was founded.

Dodging the central issue and tinkering at the edges, the government has sought for years to address rural poverty through, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, “agricultural subsidies, tax cuts for farmers and massive rural infrastructure spending”.

China’s foot-dragging meant that it eventually fell a step behind fellow Communist Vietnam, which introduced a legal market in land-use rights in 1993. Vietnam’s experience, according to a paper in the IMF’s Finance and Development magazine, achieved a more equitable outcome than one might have expected from free market allocation: while there were both winners and losers, the gains in fact tended to favour the poor and those who initially had too little land.

When China’s Communist Party agreed to new rural land policies this October, it looked for a moment as though radical change was on its way at last. The new plan means farmland can be leased over an unspecified “long term” rather than 30 years, and farmers will be allowed to “sub-contract, lease, exchange or swap” their land-use rights.

Local media reports said the government had laid the ground for the creation of larger and more efficient farms, some cited estimates that the move would double  disposable incomes in the countryside to more than $1,200 per person a year by 2020, and others suggested that it would give farmers better protection against official land-grabs.

Independent commentators, however, have brushed off the initiative as a pragmatic response to deal with wider social and economic problems rather than an ideological shift within the ruling party.

First, the Party faced the prospect of mounting unrest among its vast rural population. In the past two years there has been a rash of protests over land seizures for mining and other industrial uses, and growing resentment at the widening wealth gap between cities and the countryside.

Second, the government has been faced with a sharp slowdown in its export-driven economy due to recession in the OECD world. The economy slipped into single-digit growth in the third quarter of 2008, just above the level of 8 percent many analysts say is the minimum required to soak up the millions of people entering the labour market every year.

According to some reports, the new rural land-use plan will unleash some $500 billion in land assets. This would fill the pockets of disgruntled peasants, perhaps cooling unrest, and it could help offset the economic impact of an export slowdown by giving a shot in the arm to domestic demand.

But there may actually be much less to the latest reforms than official reports pretend. The geopolitical intelligence group Stratfor concludes that they “might turn out to be a symbolic gesture, used to appease the masses while … (China is) compelled to focus on growth”.

Indeed, it would appear that the new land-licence regulations merely codify what is already happening in practice. As Yu Jianrong, a leading researcher on social conflict in Beijing, told the Southern Metropolis Weekly: ”there’s actually little new here”.

Without bolder moves towards full-fledged private ownership of land, China’s farmers will always be peasants. But China’s leaders always play a very long game. The Economist notes that even the epochal reforms of 30 years ago tended to come in baby steps rather than great leaps, and often were
formulated retrospectively. 

“In tiptoeing gingerly around one of the last Maoist shibboleths - collective landownership - the Party may yet be sowing the seeds of the rural transformation it promises.”

First on Zimbabwe, now on Darfur, Western countries have lost out at the U.N. Security Council to African states backed by China and Russia.

A Western attempt to get sanctions imposed on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government flopped on July 11. Three weeks later, when it came to renewing the mandate of peacekeepers in Darfur, Western countries bowed to demands to include wording that made clear the council would be ready to freeze any International Criminal Court indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide. The United States abstained, but that made no difference to the vote.

The question had long come up in Western countries as to how much Africa mattered to them given what often seemed intractable wars, famine, disease and poverty. From an African perspective, Western countries - often former colonial powers - have sometimes been accused of arrogance, meddling and ignorance of the continent’s realities.

But while Africa’s economies were once dependent on aid and finance from the West, it is China and other Asian countries that are now rushing to invest, helping to drive unprecedented growth. How Africa will deal with the new investment was a key topic at this week’s meeting in Mauritania with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. G8 countries, meanwhile, appear to be falling short on their promises of aid.

Investment from China comes without the conditions that Western countries or institutions might insist on. Meanwhile, China has been very ready to back African friends in diplomatic forums such as the United Nations. Russia is less important as an investor, but has taken a similar diplomatic line.

So how relevant does the West remain in Africa? And if its influence is waning then will that give African countries a chance to do a better job of solving problems their own way? Will it give a freer hand to leaders with little concern for democracy, human rights and government accountability?

What do you think?