How long can Zuma last?

Interesting article


President on a leash - How long can Zuma last?
by Ken Owen
As President Jacob Zuma settles into office, one question - rarely articulated but ominous - casts a long shadow over his prospects: how long will he last? One year? Three? Or a full term of five years?

The answer lies in the hands of the ANC bosses who marshalled 2 300 obedient cadres to behead Thabo Mbeki at Polokwane and put Zuma on the throne of the presidency. What they did once before, they can do again. And the fact that nearly two-thirds of the voters ratified their choice of Zuma makes no material difference. His term will end when the party hierarchy decides.

The events at Polokwane disclosed to us that under SA's flawed constitution, power lies not with the electorate, nor in parliament, nor even in the presidency. It lies in the labyrinthine recesses of Luthuli House where the ANC leaders plot and connive, and decide who will be "deployed" to what job, and for how long.

The process is hidden from public view, reducing the entire constitutional paraphernalia of elections, parliamentary debates and traditions, and checks and balances to marginal relevance. The public clash of ideas between government and opposition in an open forum where (if I may resort to one of the noblest phrases of parliamentary democracy) "strangers may be present" is little more than public theatre.

Parliamentarians pontificate, the opposition denounces and cajoles, the media solemnly records public statements and gathers comments, all the while hiding the brutal fact that the real debates take place in secret at Luthuli House. To discover what happens there requires not simply press freedom but something like Kremlinology, a reading of political tea leaves.

What we do know from the Mbeki example is that the presidency, supposedly the mighty executive branch of government, is but the lackey of faceless men and women in the only important centre of power at party headquarters. In the end, the party will decide from day to day, or month to month, whether President Zuma will survive, and for how long.


For full article go to http://www.leader.co.za/article.aspx?s=1&f=1&a=1326