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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All posts tagged under »politics«
Zuma, the “teflon president” digs in his heels
The political teflon that seemed to enable South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma to slip out of one scandal and crisis after another has been ripped away by the Constitutional Court. But he still sows no signs of budging and even electoral damage may not move him.
Forward to a Citzens’ Coalition?
April 26, 2016
Placing a cross on a ballot paper every five years in order to hand over political control to a party bureaucracy is democratic only in that voters willingly forgo the potential power they, collectively, have.
Watch out when China coughs
April 22, 2016
It has been said that if Wall Street sneezes, the world catches cold. Today it would probably be more accurate to say that if China coughs, an already economically weakened world faces the threat of double pneumonia.
Zuma & the ‘Yugoslav card’
April 7, 2016
It was the “Yugoslav card” — the threat of territorial fragmentation — that enabled President Jacob Zuma to ensure that the ANC leadership would rally behind him. He made it clear that, unlike former president Thabo Mbeki, sacked by the ANC, he would not go quietly.
Reality & danger of SA student protests
April 2, 2016
With the insecurity and fear still being spread by the global economic crisis, all the resentment and tensions of recent decades is coming to the surface in South Africa and the recent campus upheavals are a good — and nihilistic — example.
Lessons to learn from SA state capture inquiries
March 29, 2016
South Africa can maintain with conviction that the country has "been there, done that" when it comes to manipulated commissions of inquiry into allegations of state capture. More than 50 years ago a massive scandal about the control the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB) secret society exercised over government was successfully fudged.
Patronage: rotting social fabric from within
March 29, 2016
Skeletons seem to be rattling around in several ministerial closets in South Africa at the moment in what appears to be a case of political patronage gone severely toxic. But there is nothing new in patronage, in business, both legitimate and illegitimate buying — or trying to buy — the favours of politicians, judges, police […]
SA unions bid to ‘save the country’
March 18, 2016
Two names now epitomise the specific economic problems and political turmoil South Africa finds itself in: Zuma and Gupta. This was also underlined a week ago during the investment roadshow to Britain and the United States headed by finance minister Pravin Gordhan.
Terry Bell Writes 
May 7, 2016
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