With the current political situation in South Africa, there is a fear that we could be headed into a phase of political violence in the build up to an election as we saw in Zimbabwe. Now many would think that this is not possible in South Africa but believe me, anything can happen and the writing is already on the wall.
The newly formed Congress of the People (COPE) has already had some problems from ANC supporters who have tried to stop their meetings from taking place or just purely pitched up at the COPE meetings and started to make noise and chant ANC slogans. It is clear that there is a section of ANC supporters out there who do not like COPE and would want COPE to fail and one way of achieving that could be through violence.
He had been out of the news for a while but now he is back and maybe even louder than ever. ANC Youth League President, Julius Malema is making the headlines again. In the beginning it was all about “Kill for Zuma”, then after that there was the whole saga about his matric results and now he has come out and started ‘taking shots’ at a lot of people. Malema has recently had a dig at Congress of the People (COPE) co-leader and former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa by referring to him as a security guard and claimed he was delinquent over child-support payments. Are these the kind of things one has to say especially in the build up to a major election next year? Is Malema going to cost ANC votes?
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Could this be the dawn of a new political party in South Africa to rival the ruling ANC and DA? It is rumoured that a breakaway ANC party may be formed in the aftermath of Thabo Mbeki being recalled from his position as President of South Africa by the ruling ANC party. Sacking Mbeki as president was not met well by many, including quite a number from the ANC including ministers in the South Africa government that Mbeki had appointed.
It is going to be interesting to see if there is any truth in this speculation. What will be even more interesting is to see who will be part of this new party. One can assume there will be some ‘big names’ in the party as they will try to take over power from the ANC. It is also suggested that there could be some leading business people who are willing to fund this new party. Will Thabo Mbeki be part of this new party, if so in what capacity? Surely he can not be the leader of this new party. I do not think he will be interested in leading a party again and may just assume a ‘godfather’ role and provide leadership and guidance to this new party.
How will the ANC themselves react to the formation of a new party which is most likely to be formed by its own members? In any political party there will be some divisions. It really is just a matter of how huge these divisions are. By the look of things, it seems as if the division in the ANC is rather large. Large enough for a new party to be formed?
We had the opportunity to hear from a political commentator with regards to what they thought about the Zimababwe deal signed yesterday. This is what they had to say:
“To me, there’s not much substance to this agreement. For one thing it almost seems like ZANU-PF were more concerned about getting the other parties to admit to their “faults” in writing for the world to see and for the other parties to agree that ZANU-PF was right all along…..it’s all the fault of the west and whites. Secondly, a lot of it is going to be based on good faith between the parties because it’s written in very broad terms and in a lot of instances, how this power sharing is actually meant to work practically is left to the parties to decide at some unspecified future point. For example the split in executive power between the President and the Prime Minister is not made clear at all, who is actually in charge of what here? Read the rest of this entry »
I was just reading that the rate of inflation in South Africa is now 13%. Oh my gosh!! We may still be a far way off the 11 million percent in Zimbabwe but boy aren’t we going in the wrong direction! The price of everything seems to be going up and many are unable to cope now. I was actually speaking to someone who is saying they have just had to cancel their DSTV subscription because they can no longer afford it and it has turned into a luxury they can do without. They say that the price of fuel will be coming down by about R1 a litre next month, maybe then we will smile again for a short time before the price starts going back up again. I don’t know if it is only me but do you tend to pay much more attention to the business news at 7pm when your are watching the news? In the past we hardly cared too much about where the rand was trading, let alone what the world oil price is, but now you find yourself making sure you do not miss that news. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, many people went out to buy the Sunday Times newspaper after seeing the headline which alleges South Africa’s President, Thabo Mbeki, of having received R30-million from a German industrial giant to ensure it won the submarine contract in democratic South Africa’s first arms deal. The report further goes on to suggest that he allegedly gave R28 million to the ANC and R2 million to former deputy president Jacob Zuma. This shocking allegation has surfaced for the first time in a highly secretive investigation by a UK-based specialist risk consultancy. At first thought, some have suggested that there is no truth in this story and that the Sunday Times are just out to make money buy finding a ’story’ which will sell their papers. But then again, this story could easily be true. Who is to say that it is impossible for such a corrupt deal to have taken place? Read the rest of this entry »
Can you imagine being lead by a president in prison who would be wearing orange clothes? You only see of such in movies where the leader of a gang is still controlling operations in the real world from his prison cell. But this is not a movie and this is the real world. ANC Youth League President Julius Malema said on Wednesday (23 July) that South Africa will be led by Jacob Zuma - even if it is from prison. This comes of the back of the possibility that ANC president, Jacob Zuma could go to jail if he is found guilty of charges put against him. Read the rest of this entry »
For many months now, South Africa has been wondering why the country has been plunged into darkness. We have gotten so used to the terms ‘load shedding’ and black outs. Everyone was talking about the electricity crisis, even children who barely new what was happening knew that there was something called Eskom and it was responsible for the loss of electricity in their homes. Now a report has been made which looks into what has actually caused this electricity crisis in South Africa. The report brings together the opinions and recommendations of 50 government leaders and businessmen on the crisis and outlines proposals to resolve it. Read the rest of this entry »
I could not believe my eyes when I saw this new Steers commercial on television! I find this advert to be so inappropriate and I think it should be taken off the air. It verges on the point of nudity and can not be ideal for family viewing. For those of you who have not seen the advert yet; basically it is a screen split into two and on one side they are showing Steers hamburgers and on the other side they are showing half dressed women with a main focus on certain parts of their bodies.
The advert is not only inappropriate for family viewing but also demeaning to women. I am not sure what the advert is trying to prove; is it trying to compare women to hamburgers? Or is it trying to test if people will look at the hamburgers rather than the women?
The cost of living in South Africa is getting out of hand. Yesterday, Eskom got the go ahead to increase electricity tariffs on the 1st of July by 13.3%, this after a 14.2% increase in December last year. Thank goodness the tariffs were not increased by 60% as Eskom had hoped for. Now that there has been a further increase in the price of electricity, you can be sure that the price of food is going to continue to go up. Read the rest of this entry »
