As the wheels of democracy continue to turn, we are fast approaching an important juncture in our young democracy. The Africa National Congress (ANC) will hopefully decide who will take the reigns of the party and be the presidential candidate in 2008. Many a newspaper have written about this and speculated to no end about the battle for the ANC. Some have written books about the current President, Thabo Mbeki, and others have sat in bars and taverns discussing who will be their president for the next 4 years. So who is your President?

I can’t really say the race is wide open at the moment, I think that the front runners are pretty clear, Jacob Zuma and the rest. To sum up the rest of the candidates as the rest may seem as disrespectful, but I think in this context there is only one person. Unfortunately there is a large school of thought and opinion that says that Zuma is not the right man for the job. There have been people in the media that have gone of their way to discredit Zuma. His much publicised court trails propelled this man into the media spotlight for the last three years. For his detractors this was the first mistake. They made Zuma into a cult figure thus assuring him a strong chance at taking up the most important seat in country at the Union Buildings. All the crazy media hype about his sexual relationships, his alleged corruption and the somewhat unfounded criticism of his inability to run the largest economy in Africa have put Zuma in the forefronts of every voter in the country. He has the most exposure of any potential candidate in ANC. The ‘rest’ don’t have this type of exposure, they seem to be mere after thoughts. So he maybe my President.

I had hoped that the battle for the Union Buildings would not play out like a Soap Opera but this is what we have. We are still a very young democracy in which the sensational glitzy stories dictate how we vote and who will lead us. I have not heard any mention of economic, health, social and international issues. I am not sure how Zuma will deal with Zimbabwe and Darfur. I am not sure if Zuma is a reformer or he will just carry on Mbeki’s agenda. This is the largest travesty in all of this: It is about how much the nation is not in the spotlight, its about men and women who are portrayed as bigger than the nation. No one is bigger than the South Africa except GOD.

Some may argue that Zuma’s media exposure may have tainted his image in the eyes of the voter. I have to disagree; his detractors have fuelled the largest underlying issue in this presidential race, the past, Apartheid. For me the White run media have given the Black Majority enough reason to support Zuma. They have tried to alienate him but they have actually improved his image as a man for the people. The past will always be the biggest vote getter in any election in South Africa for the next 100 years. Apartheid and its horrors are fresh in the minds of the majority. The realities of Apartheid are very much evident in the economy where most Blacks are unemployable, not unemployed but unemployable due to the systematic ‘dumbing’ of the Black Majority during Apartheid. So attacking someone who represents success for the average man like Zuma was a foolish move. This was a move that may have handed the presidency to the former MEC of Tourism for KwaZulu-Natal, a man who may not have imagined being on the verge of becoming the most powerful African president.

So who is your President? I don’t think we have a choice, we live in a flawed system in which we may not have a choice in who rules us, that is left to the ANC’s party list system, which we may not have access to if we are not ANC members. But this is another issue for another day. Welcome Baba Zuma.

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