Vol 49 No 24 | SOUTH AFRICA How to reinvent Black Economic Empowerment 28th November 2008 Black Economic Empowerment was intended to place Africans alongside whites at the head of South African business. Most big white-controlled companies went along with BEE, facing two realities....
Vol 49 No 22 | SOUTH AFRICA Squaring the circle 31st October 2008 Would-be president Jacob Zuma has to please his left-wing backers but lacks the money to pay for the promises Mid-October was not a good time to visit Washington. As banks collapsed and great industrial firms were threatened with closure, Jacob Zuma, the African National Congress President and...
Vol 49 No 22 | SOUTH AFRICA The Left's alternative economics 31st October 2008 Cosatu and the SACP want to abandon inflation-targeting and spend the money 'released' on job creation, poverty and income support The Congress of South African Trade Unions and South African Communist Party are enraged by African National Congress President Jacob Zuma's statements on economic policy continuity. One Cosatu...
Vol 49 No 21 | SOUTH AFRICA On the verge of a nervous breakdown 17th October 2008 A formal break in the ruling African National Congress is looming. On 13 October, its National WorkingCommittee, dominated by supporters of party President Jacob Zuma, suspended former party Chairman, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, who announced five days earlier that...
Vol 49 No 21 | SOUTH AFRICA All politics is provincial 17th October 2008 All the African National Congress’s provincial branches are internally divided between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma supporters. The Western Cape and Eastern Cape branches are still reeling from the pro-Zuma leadership’s sacking this year of their pro-Mbeki Premiers, Ebrahim Rasool and Nosimo Balindlela. On 10...
Vol 49 No 21 | SOUTH AFRICA The breakaways 17th October 2008 Four leading ANC figures will split from the ANC to start a new party with Mosiuoa Lekota Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota, born in 1948 in Kroonstad, Free State, is from the same political generation as Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale, Mathews Phosa and Kgalema Motlanthe. They all...
Vol 49 No 20 | SOUTH AFRICA A wounded presidency 3rd October 2008 President Motlanthe has a tough mandate: to heal a broken party and hold back an economic downturn The soft-spoken Kgalema Motlanthe, elevated from the Deputy Presidency of the African National Congress to the Presidency of South Africa, faces a tough job. Amid bitterness, Thabo Mbeki...
Vol 49 No 20 | SOUTH AFRICA 'Elder brother' Motlanthe 3rd October 2008 He may have preferred to coach Bafana Bafana, but Kgalema Motlanthe is now Acting President of South Africa In 1997, the quiet, unassuming but cerebral Kgalema Motlanthe was nominated by the left wing of the African National Congress tripartite alliance as ANC General Secretary, as a...
Vol 49 No 20 | SOUTH AFRICA Would be breakaway 3rd October 2008 The ousting of Thabo Mbeki has divided the ANC Baleka Mbete, Chairwoman of the African National Congress, says: ‘anybody who is thinking of going off and forming another party is wasting their energy’. Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s...
Vol 49 No 19 | SOUTH AFRICA The ANC – a luta continua 19th September 2008 President Mbeki's supporters have accepted that it is 99% certain that Jacob Zuma will be South Africa's next President As President Thabo Mbeki claims a rare success in promoting cooperation between the rivals in neighbouring Zimbabwe, the Jacob Zuma-dominated ANC leadership is deciding whether to impeach him,...