This is how social media images of a country inform one’s perceptions, and then stick like glue in this instant-info “Gutenberg Galaxy” of ours. You scroll through Google News, Facebook and Twitter, and powerful impressions of countries impinge on your subconscious without you being able to question them. Then you “form” an unmediated and indelible […]
Jacob Zuma
Posted inNews/Politics
The chortling schoolboy fluffs his sonorous monologue
It was the best and worse of South African political discourse. It was the raw hope of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison exactly 25 years ago this week, reduced to a squabbling farce. It was the magisterial Chair of the National Chamber of Provinces versus the classroom monitor pettiness of the Speaker of the National […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Sona: Did you hear Zuma chuckle?
By Michelle October Last night, did anybody else hear that laugh? It was a long, satisfied, deep-throated chuckle. Just moments before, half of the parliamentarians elected to govern the country alongside Jacob Zuma and his party had rose up against him, in a last resounding, powerless attempt to make him see reason. The renegades in […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
My hot date with the prez
The invitation arrived by blue-light brigade in a red envelope. “Will you be my Valentine?” it read. “Well, yes!” I replied. It’s a little early for Valentine’s I thought, but hey, it’s not every day you get a Valentine’s letter with a presidential seal. What to wear? A two-tone shirt will set the wrong tone. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Social media dump Zuma in a political pickle
It is a legal maxim never to ask in court a question to which you don’t already know the answer. There’s a political equivalent, which is never to ask voters for advice that you don’t intend taking. In advance of next week’s State of the Nation address (Sona), the Presidency invited South Africans to use […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zuma’s bad dose of ‘premature proclamation’ causes legislative impotence
It’s not often that a country’s leader goes to court to nullify laws that his own government drafted and he earlier happily signed. But hey, this is South Africa where the left hand often is at odds with its right-hand partner. Here, trade unions regularly demonstrate against the very government that they are part of. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Marie biscuit corruption shows up the rot
This week a minor official, corrupted with a packet of Marie biscuits, highlighted starkly the present rot and inequities in the nation. Corruption is endemic to all political systems. What differs is how it is dealt with. Because governments in Western democracies are easily voted out, popular outrage over corruption is assuaged by periodically acting […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
ANC, La Grange and the danger of polarised debate
South Africa’s twittersphere was set ablaze last week when former president Nelson Mandela’s personal assistant, Zelda la Grange reacted to comments made by President Jacob Zuma who ascribed many of the country’s present governance problems to Jan van Riebeeck (the Dutch settler who “founded” Cape Town in 1652). The substance of her tweets does not […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The ANC has a leadership problem
Despite its parliamentary majority, 2014 was a year of reckoning for the ANC. Seemingly no longer in command of Parliament or public opinion, it emerged from the election bruised but not defeated. However, its performance lacks the swaggering bravado we have come to expect – it knows it has been wounded. Whether it can staunch […]
Posted inNews/Politics
2014: The SAS Zuma adrift in choppy waters
The year’s close is traditionally a time for introspection. It is not only an opportunity to dwell nostalgically on what was good, but also to identify patterns that if extrapolated give plausible shape to our future. South Africa’s first year without Nelson Mandela around has been a rudderless one. And since Madiba was absent from […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Order, order: A parliamentary mess
The events that occurred in Parliament last week have generated a significant amount of debate in South Africa. And for good reason. Police entered the Chamber in 1966 when an apartheid-era prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, was assassinated on the floor of the House by a messenger in the Old Assembly. No one died last week. […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Why Zuma’s resignation is true if we say so
How do you get more than 350 000 visits to your website in just a few days? Claim that the South African president has resigned. Siyathokoza Khumalo created an online media frenzy with a blog post on November 3 facetiously titled President Jacob Zuma has resigned. Social media went nuts and the hashtag #ZumasResigned is still […]