The recent meeting between former president Jacob Zuma and EFF leader Julius Malema, some have argued, has sought to undermine the tripartite alliance.
If you’re the gambling type, where do you place your bets?
On President Cyril Ramaphosa, the staid, plodding, committee-obsessed, consensus-forward technocrat? On the legal system, bound as it is by the constraints imposed by rule of law and mauled by the Years of Zuma? Or on Ace Magashule, former warlord of the Free State, current secretary-general of the ANC, de facto leader of the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) movement, and a man with a current tally of 21 charges of corruption and fraud hanging over his head?
As the roulette wheel spins into oblivion, the outcome will be determined by the following zero-sum logic: if Ace loses, he and his supporters will be locked out of patronage networks, their families disgraced and likely impoverished, their links to the ANC’s power brokers severed. Ace himself, and many more, will serve a considerable sentence, and will be too old to emerge from prison as a warrior waging righteous warfare against White Monopoly Capital.
Pandemic President Cyril Ramaphosa s tight-rope walk
Thursday night marked Cyril Ramaphosa s fifth State of the Nation Address, but his first since Covid-19 gripped the country and the rest of the world.
It resulted in a much-muted affair, with only a handful of mask-wearing MPs in Parliament, while the president made his address which had a strong focus on economic recovery and business, with very few details on the vaccine rollout, which is probably what most citizens wanted to hear.
25 May marks two years since Ramaphosa was officially inaugurated as the country s president after holding down the fort following Jacob Zuma s resignation on 14 February 2018.
MONEYWEB
app instead?
This fight is very far from over.
By Jan-Jan Joubert
21 Dec 2020 00:01
No: ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule does not want to step aside. Image: Rogan Ward, Reuters
The stakes are high for the Jacob Zuma faction in the ANCâs last chance saloon, and at this stage of the political poker game impacting all South Africans, they are in terrible trouble because their best hand is only an ace high.
All eyes are on ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule after the partyâs Integrity Commission report finding that Magashule must immediately stand aside from his position was leaked to the media before it could be discussed by the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC).