Allister Sparks, author of First Drafts, and regular columnist for Business Day, has come out with guns blazing after President Zuma’s pleas to Gordon Brown to “drop” sanctions against Zimbabwe. Of course it might have helped had England actually imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe. Sparks tackles this and other inaccuracies as well as suggesting what steps the President might well insist upon being taken.
Whatever President Zuma may have gained for our country during his state visit to Britain, the sad thing is he failed to seize the one opportunity he had to transform his international image completely — which was to come out strongly with a decisive new policy to resolve the protracted mess in Zimbabwe. To show that he is not just a continuation of Thabo Mbeki on this morally definitive issue.
Instead he tried to persuade British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to scrap what he called the European Union’s “sanctions against Zimbabwe.” This was dumbfounding. He must have known it was a non-starter.
Last week was a difficult President Zuma, ragged as he was by the British press, which had a field day with the President’s polygamous lifestyle during his visit to the country.
Zuma biographer Jeremy Gordin takes issue with one paper and reporter in particular: Stephen Robinson of The Daily Mail. For those of you who missed it (could you possibly have?) Robinson wrote the now famous words, “Jacob Zuma is a sex-obsessed bigot with four wives and 35 children.” Gordin makes a valid point or two his “hands off” response:
If you do not know about the brouhaha surrounding President Jacob G Zuma and the English newspapers – mainly of the tabloid shape and mindset (for want of a better word) – you must either be poor (for which I'm sorry) or perhaps living in some bizarre, cut-off place such as Hogsback or Cape Town. Yet even in those outlandish places, I understand, the Internet exists.
It’s been great fun, hasn't it, watching the souties (or rooinekke, if you prefer) having a go at the President. The President has, by the way (this info is for those residing in Hogsback) gone to London, with one of his three wives, Thobeka Madiba-Zuma, to see Queen Elizabeth II and a few other handlangers, such as Prince Phillip and Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Jonathan Ball and The Book Lounge invite you to a conversation between poet, deputy transport minister and SACP official Jeremy Cronin and the authors of the biography of Chris Hani, Hani: A Life Too Short.
Chris Hani’s assassination in 1993 gave rise to one of South Africa’s great imponderables: if he had survived, what impact would he have had on politics and government in South Africa? More pointedly, could this charismatic leader have risen to become president of the country?
Come listen to what is bound to be a telling and invigorating talk.
While the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the unbanning of the ANC and Mandela’s release from prison, Rian Malan, author of Resident Alien, defends the role of FW de Klerk in ending Apartheid. Particularly against one resistant Englishman:
I almost punched an Englishman the other day. We were sitting in a bar, talking about the 20th anniversary of F.W. de Klerk’s Great Leap Forward of 2 February 1990 — the day he rocked the world by announcing that he was about to unban the revolutionary movements, free Nelson Mandela and turn South Africa into a land of peace and justice. I was explaining why I thought de Klerk’s move was an act of heroism almost unparalleled in the history of humankind, but the Englishman didn’t want to know. ‘De Klerk was a loser,’ he said, ‘a racist battered into submission by sanctions, township violence and global isolation, and then forced to do a decent thing that should have been done decades earlier.’ The corollary was of course that Mandela was a sweet old man who shouldn’t have been locked up at all, and the ANC an army of hymn-singing moderates who just wanted to establish a democracy like Great Britain’s. Like I say, I wanted to moer him, and I’d better explain why.
Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert is a man deeply involved in the politics of South Africa, having earned the loyalty of his allies and the respect of his enemies. Fellow political commentator Max du Preez and others recently came together to publish a book of essays about the man and his legacy, The Passion For Reason.
John Robbie from 702 Talk Radio met with van Zyl Slabbert to discuss politics, redemptive theory and making a difference.
The Passion for Reason is a collection of essays in honour of an Afrikaner and African icon – Frederik van Zyl Slabbert.
For decades, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert has been one of South Africa’s towering public figures. As an academic, politician, thinker and businessman, Slabbert has made an enduring contribution to many fields, playing a critical role in the transition to democracy and in the creation and building of civil society institutions.
As the leader of the official opposition, he fought in Parliament against the apartheid system. As one of the co-founders of IDASA, he led a group of Afrikaners on the historic 1987 trip to Dakar to meet the ANC in exile. With the advent of democracy, he became the founding chair of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa, deepening a lifelong commitment to the freedom of the individual and the consolidation of democratic governance in South Africa.
The Passion for Reason is a celebration of Slabbert’s life and achievements, bringing together leading writers, academics, commentators and friends, who reflect critically on his life and work over the years. The book includes an introduction by his children Tania and Riko Slabbert and essays, recollections and contributions from:
The slow quickness of life (Thinking about my friend, the Chief) Breyten Breytenbach
An amalgam that worked Alex Boraine
Slabbert’s opening of the apartheid mind: Portrait of an unrecognised patriot Heribert Adam & Kogila Moodley
Responsibility without power: South Africa’s liberal precursors of democracy Theodor Hanf
Golden boy, golden opportunity: A note on Van Zyl Slabbert Hermann Giliomee
The man who wasn’t there Ken Owen
Dakar impressions Max du Preez
Van Zyl Slabbert: Sociologist at work in advancing democratic politics Wilmot James
Ice, steam and water: Non-profit organisations in South Africa Michael Savage
Deadly Statistics: Cold Facts Virginia van der Vliet & David Welsh
Gender politics in South Africa: In need of a resurrection Rhoda Kadalie
Land reform in the new South Africa – ‘good times, bad times’ Errol Knott Moorcroft
Author and columnist Jeremy Gordin knows a thing or two about the ANC. He is after all the biographer of its current president. But Zuma’s one thing, Julius Malema’s another, and Gordin is fed up:
What do we know about Little Julie? Well, he’s 29 years old and he was raised by a single mother, a domestic worker. I have seen reports, though I can’t remember where, that he has a child somewhere. Having various children “somewhere” seems to be de rigueur for our leaders, but let’s not go there right now. I have, however, never seen Little Julie (in photographs or TV footage) with a woman – he’s always with that bunch of guys from the league who look like clones.
His school career seems to have been rather undistinguished. He failed two high school grades as well as several subjects in his final secondary school examination. His highest mark attained at school was apparently a “c” for second language English and he’s reported to have scored less than 30 percent for maths and woodwork.
I would have been inclined not to take too much notice of Julie’s school marks. Not everyone is cut out to be an intemallectual and, if you think about it, what did you learn at school and university that was worth diddley? C’mon, be honest. And, well, I have soft spot for people lousy at woodwork – I think I got three percent for the subject (besides setting a Transvaal record for biology, 8 percent).
Zuma’s State of the Nation address last Thursday was met with much criticism. While some were merely discouraged by the president’s vagueness, Allister Sparks, author of First Drafts, thinks that JZ completely blew it:
If the events of the past two weeks have combined to convey any clear political message, it is that Jacob Zuma is a lame duck a mere nine months into his presidency.
He has been hobbled from the start by the need to keep the competing factions of his coalition together. This has forced him into a strategy of constant compromise, sacrificing clear leadership for the sake of maintaining unity.
Last week journalist and author of Zuma: A biography Jeremy Gordin stood up for South Africa’s beleaguered President, who is in the throes of what might be called “Khozagate“. After some reflection, though, Gordin has come to realise that Zuma has placed himself in a pickle with his latest faux pas – as evidenced by his lack of support from the usual quarters:
But never mind all my words and your words and Zapiro’s nasty little cartoons and all the moral indignation.
What is way more interesting has been the reaction from the tri-partite alliance. There has hardly been one. Remember a while back when Helen Zille made her ad hominem attacks on Zuma? Remember how the alliance, and especially the ANC, reacted? They turned on Zille. They turned on anyone who dared criticise Zuma. Actually Little Julie said he would kill for Zuma (or maybe that was on another occasion – but you get the picture).
But now? Now there has been a cold, cold, an icy, silence from everyone – in the ANC, the SACP, and Cosatu. They are seriously pissed off with Zuma – hence, the apology of last weekend (versus the silly first reaction from the presidency, the one about the press report blighting the life of an innocent mother and child). And this silence – this lack of obvious support for Zuma – is actually very serious for him (for which “insight”, by the way, I thank Anton Harber for pointing out to me).
Allister Sparks is less than impressed with where the ANC and its ruling partners have placed their emphasis in the first month of 2010. Public spats – like that embodied by the butting of Tokyo Sexwale and Gwede Mantashe’s heads over a “booing report” (it would be hard to make this stuff up) – are taking precedence over hard policy, he finds to his great distress:
LISTENING to our political debate as this critical new decade gets under way, I am struck by its mind-blowing banality and irrelevance. We are at a vital phase in our development, for the foundations of the new SA have been laid and it is in the course of this decade that we must accelerate or we shall fall behind and fail to become a successful nation.
This is because there are some serious structural problems that threaten our future, yet our rulers are not focusing on them. They are preoccupied instead with arcane ideological arguments and personal and factional rivalries.
Everyone is too busy scheming about who should get which job, about how to shut down the opportunities for so-and-so to build branch support so he can be squeezed out at the next national conference, about who commands “the strategic centre of political power” and how to promote your buddy so he can get there and then ease you and your faction higher up the pecking order.
Allister Sparks, author of First Drafts, and regular columnist for Business Day, has come out with guns blazing after President Zuma’s pleas to Gordon Brown to “drop” sanctions against Zimbabwe. Of course it might have helped had England actually imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe. Sparks tackles this and other inaccuracies as well as suggesting what steps the President might well insist upon being taken.
