South Africa: Politics, profits and policing …
South Africa: Politics, profits and policing after the Marikana Massacre
Lover of fast cars, vintage wine, trout fishing and game farming and the second richest black businessperson in South Africa (global financial publication Forbes puts his wealth at $675 million or £416 million), Cyril Ramaphosa (left) celebrates his election as deputy president of the ANC with South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. Ramaphosa demanded that police break the Marikana mineworkers’ strike; police massacred 34 minerworkers and wounded 78 others.
read article @ http://links.org.au/node/3154
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from Business Day:
EDITORIAL: Now let’s see some vigorous leadership
21.des.2012
President Jacob Zuma addresses delegates at the ANC’s Mangaung conference. Picture: ANC MEDIA PIX
Jacob Zuma, armed with a loyal and united team, must now lead our country forward with vigour
THE African National Congress’s (ANC’s) Mangaung gathering will go down in history as the meeting at which President Jacob Zuma routed his opponents on all fronts. Nothing underlines this more than the spectacle of the much-feted former leaders of the ANC Youth League haplessly knocking on the door begging to be readmitted, only for the door to be slammed in their faces.
Yet it wasn’t only Julius Malema who got his final comeuppance. Mr Zuma’s adversaries in the ANC threw their best punches — and came up short.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions is now divided and relatively acquiescent.
The South African Communist Party is on board — more or less. Rebellious regional leaders have been brought to heel. The starry-eyed challengers for the presidency have been humiliated.
What is more, Mr Zuma began — at last — to sound like a leader. His position is now stronger, so he may feel more at liberty to define the direction of the ANC rather than be buffeted into indecision by contesting currents.
For business, particularly, the Mangaung conference is a step forward.
After being pilloried, isolated and ignored since the previous conference at Polokwane, the ANC has woken up to the harm it has been doing to business and investor confidence with quixotic fantasies about dictating the direction of economic development, symbolised in many ways by the call for nationalisation.
The significance of the decision not only to take nationalisation “off the table” but also to dump the term “strategic nationalisation” in favour of “strategic state ownership”, is a deliberate signal. Not a moment too soon. Politics in the modern era is a hubbub of negotiation, not a succession of commands.
It is possible to quibble about the extent of this shift. Some will argue that nothing much has changed. What, after all, is the difference between “strategic nationalisation” and “strategic state ownership”, other than semantics?
Yet, in this case, semantics matters, particularly when backed by other indications and suggestions.
The most important of these is the ringing endorsement from the conference, and from Mr Zuma, of the National Development Plan.
The plan emanated from the government but it now has explicit party support, which in South African terms is crucial.
This in itself has been emphatically underlined by the elevation of the deputy chairman of the National Planning Commission, Cyril Ramaphosa, to deputy president of the ANC.
Mr Ramaphosa can naturally be expected to be a strong advocate of the plan in the future. In the battle between the National Development Plan and the much more interventionist New Economic Policy, the scale has just tipped in favour of the former.
For anyone who believes in a modern, realistic and progressive view of national economics, this is good news.
Apart from that, Mr Ramaphosa’s re-entry into party politics represents a victory for those dealing and negotiating in the real world, rather than in the world of ideological illusion.
He brings a good deal of experience and gravitas to an organisation that, frankly, was in grave danger of losing its rudder. It is an arguable point, but in political terms, the ANC may have recognised that the party was losing traction among the urban, emerging middle class, and Mr Ramaphosa’s elevation was an attempt to restore the balance.
Nothing is simple about this process.
The fractious tendencies in the party will remain and taming the ceaseless gyrations of South African politics will never be easy. But Mr Zuma now has a clear slate, a clear mandate and a clear plan — at least within his own party.
The battles within that party must now recede into the background, and the implementation phase should begin in earnest for the good of all South Africans. The way is, at last, clear, or perhaps as clear as it can be.
Mr Zuma, armed with a loyal and united team, must now lead our country forward with vigour.
@ http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/editorials/2012/12/21/editorial-now-lets-see-some-vigorous-leadership