Who rules South Africa? <http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?view=article&catid=39%3Aopinion-a-analysi s&id=65741%3Awho-rules-south-africa&format=pdf&option=com_content&Itemid=132 > Description: PDF
<http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?view=article&catid=39%3Aopinion-a-analysi s&id=65741%3Awho-rules-south-africa&tmpl=component&print=1&layout=default&pa ge=&option=com_content&Itemid=132> Description: Print <http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?option=com_mailto&tmpl=component&link=7c5 0901f2ef6a67fd2756dace8a502dcee95bb6f> Description: E-mail Monday, 04 February 2013 00:00 Sue Onslow Martin Plaut and Paul Holden. Biteback Publishing (2012) In the centenary year of the formation of the African National Congress (ANC) and with all eyes on President Jacob Zuma as he prepares to fight for his political life at the ANC elective conference in Mangaung this December, Who Rules South Africa? was been published at the perfect time to look again at South African contemporary politics. The shooting of 34 miners at Lonmins Marikana site in August 2012 also dramatically underlines the need for a sophisticated understanding of the complexities of power in South Africa. The authors, Martin Plaut (Africa editor, BBC World Service News) and Paul Holden, ask what the driving force of change is in todays South Africa. Is it the participatory politics of unions and civic organisation? The party as the revolutionary vanguard for socio-economic transformation? Class interest? Self-interest? Criminal interest? As this book points out in its detailed exposé of the structure and strings of power, South African democracy is not under terminal threat, but the warning signs are there. The authors, two highly respected commentators, combine domestic and international perspectives and use a wide range of secondary sources, speeches, policy documents, investigative journalism of the fiercely independent South African press, and their own extensive personal interviews, to provide a damning indictment of the manipulations of power from the hopeful dawn of 1994 onwards. The ANC was always going to have a revisionist press, as the liberation movement and its leaders were proved to have feet of clay and the toxic legacies of the apartheid era proved more enduring and difficult to combat than was originally hoped. The authors do not find the increasingly vicious struggles for power between the different factions over the last decade at all surprising, given the Alliances sometimes schizophrenic components. The tensions within the Tripartite Alliance of the ANC, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), and the South African Communist Party (SACP) played out in informal councils where the real discussions took place, are set against the background historical context of the complex and multi-layered strands of the liberation movement. The authors chart the erosion of the democratic foundations of power, the silencing of political debate including attempts to muzzle South Africas fiercely independent print media and interference with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and the threats to the independent judiciary and attacks on the Constitutional Court as the book makes clear, leading ANC officials fail to appreciate that no-one is above the law. Also covered are the dangers of erosion of a non-partisan civil service, the distortion of the role of the intelligence community and security services to serve party interest, and the leeching of ANC values as the party fails to deliver to its core constituencies. There are two densely written chapters on the Arms Deal and the erosion of Parliamentary power; and the uses and abuses of intelligence. There is a wealth of detail here in the bombardment of names, acronyms, dates and details of competing agendas, but readers should persevere as the conclusions to these chapters pack a very large punch indeed. So too, the perverse and selfish agenda behind populist calls for nationalisation, to rescue an improvident and greedy narrow clique of new BBE oligarchs, behind the facade of national empowerment. To its detractors, the ANC is an object lesson in the Lord Acton maxim, Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Plauts chapter Crime, Corruption and Connections expressly addresses this. The discussion of the land issue is thoughtful and detailed, as is the examination of the causes and consequences of service delivery failure. The ANCs parliamentary majority and claimed legitimacy as the countrys liberator, has insulated it from the need to too rapidly respond to civil society campaigns. But legitimate socio-economic pressures are building, and cannot be ignored. The ANC may be more able now to draw on the resources of the state to maintain power, but as Plaut and Holden point out, the possibility that thousands of frequently violent community protests over local state failure might coalesce into a widespread popular revolt against (its) uses and abuses. ANCs modus operandi as a clandestine and conspiratorial clique before the party evolved into a mass movement has left a disturbing inheritance: among some ANC sections, the tendency to ruthlessness and brutality are embedded. The recent assassination of ANC delegate, Wandile Mkhize, illustrates that when challenged, such political cultures fall back on established practices of coercion and stifling of debate. LSE Review of Books. Thé Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy" Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi "Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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