Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
from Africa News blog:
Zuma sweeps in
It was South Africa’s most exciting election campaign for a long time, enlivened by the split in the African National Congress and the personality of Jacob Zuma, the man who is now pretty much assured of becoming president despite the best efforts of plenty of people within his party as well as the opposition.
So far, the results don’t look too different from the pre-poll forecasts. An ANC victory was never in doubt and the battle was as much as anything about whether the party could keep its two-thirds majority in parliament, which lets it change the constitution and further entrench its power. That was still in doubt after early figures.
There was not much good news for the Congress of the People (COPE), formed by loyalists of ousted former President Thabo Mbeki. With only about eight percent of the vote so far, the question may be as much whether it survives as whether it can supplant the Democratic Alliance as the main opposition.
The DA seemed to have done fairly well with its “Stop Zuma” campaign, at least in its Western Cape stronghold, but there was no sign of it making inroads among the black majority.
Whatever losses the ANC had made to COPE and the DA, it seemed to have made some of them up in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s Zulu heartland, where it battered the once locally dominant Inkatha Freedom Party.
It certainly looks as though Zuma’s support was not affected by the fact the corruption charges against him were dismissed on a technicality rather than after a trial.
How well placed will he now be to deliver the change that many South Africans say they want on fighting crime, poverty, corruption and AIDS? Will COPE survive or might its supporters start to drift back to the ANC? Will the opposition ever really be able to challenge the ANC?
from Africa News blog:
Will South Africa’s poor always back ANC?
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.
Hardly goes by now without Mugabe calling for the lifting of targeted sanctions or some one in MDC asking for financial aid. MDC claims the GNU will collapse without financial aid with “dire consequences” to the ordinary Zimbabweans. Of course they are lying because the same individuals supported sanctions and the cutting of aid in the past. Mugabe, the master of intrigue, agreed to have MDC join him for that very purpose – that MDC should be his emissaries to the West. The targeted sanctions particularly are hurting Mugabe and those in his inner circle and that is what he is concerned about. He does not care about the ordinary people; never did!
Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess because of the years of corrupt and misrule by Mugabe. The GNU has not changed that; Mugabe still has his dictatorial powers and continue to flex these muscles. Bankrolling a lawless and corrupt Zimbabwe will not benefit the ordinary people in any way. Indeed the move will negate all the gains and sufferings made so far.
The targeted sanctions are having an adverse effect on Mugabe and his cronies. The sanctions must be maintained now more than ever before.
I am frightened of the future where a populist strong man with much to hide is elected by a population more driven by loyalty thatn morality and ethics. The slippery slope begins………..