William Saunderson-Meyer

One foreign correspondent fancifully warned his animal-loving British readers that each game would be preceded ‘by the ritual slaughter of an animal – probably a bullock or a goat – out on the pitch’.

Malema’s five-paragraph mea culpa is uncomfortably reminiscent of those grovelling pleadings favoured in the Communist show-trials.

‘What a mess the ‘mother of all parliaments’ finds herself in. The old dear must be dithering on the wrong side of senility to cause one of Her Majesty’s top diplomats to note scornfully that ‘British democracy is no better than Uzbekistan’s.’

Zimbabwe was Africa’s hope. It is Africa’s despair. It may be, many fear, SA’s future.

While Malema conceded that the ANC government had the right to express its opinions, senior members could not act to endanger the position and standing of the ANCYL. ‘The ANC is not an independent body. It exists within the umbrella policy and discipline of the ANCYL,’ Malema said.

The expectation was that when the African National Congress — being the broad political church that it is — eventually fractured, the split would be between the nationalists and the socialists. It has since become apparent that the critical fault lines in the party are less ideological than they are around personal rivalries based. For […]

It is dispiriting that the ANC’s sudden restraint has more to do with managing international perceptions ahead of the Soccer World Cup than it has do with what happens in SA in the long term. It is also dispiriting that the death of a particularly vile racist has given a shot in the arm to a white supremacist movement that previously was on life support.

To argue that there is no judicial solution to provocative sloganeering is not to contend that there is no political solution.

It is Zuma’s job to lead the country. Not to sprint between fiery communities, spreading avuncular reassurance like a fire-blanket over conflagrations.

There is the same curious inability to stop popping candy into the maws of monsters, the same paralysis when it comes to implementing nitty-gritty decisions rather than drafting airy-fairy policies.

The only instantly identifiable Afrikaner leaders are defunct (FW de Klerk), defected (Marthinus van Schalkwyk), or deranged (Eugene Terre Blanche).

What everyone is waiting for from Zuma is leadership. It has been sorely lacking at home and now he has fluffed the chance to exhibit it on the international stage that former president Thabo Mbeki bestrode with such confidence.