Jacob Zuma: Can he last past 2014?
Picture: by DonkeyHotey from Flickr.com

The ANC has backed Jacob Zuma for a second term as president of South Africa. This news comes a few days after the release of Adriaan Basson’s book Zuma Exposed, which details the interesting circle of comrades surrounding the president. It also comes a week after Mail & Guardian ran an expose on Zuma’s questionable financial entanglements.

South Africa begins to feel like Israel, or France, or dare we say Zimbabwe, where those in high positions cling to office to escape their inevitable day in court. Zuma foiled attempts to get him to answer corruption charges related to the R60 billion arms scandal, which now appears as nothing more than a luscious pension fund for the ANC. As Basson points out, Zuma was by no means the biggest beneficiary from the scandal, but he remains dangerously tainted by it.

Around him he has selected ministers and officials, many of whom are equally tainted. We have a new deputy president in the form of Cyril “zero to billionaire in 10 years” Ramaphosa who sits on more than 200 boards, covering just about every sector of the economy. How can he possibly raise his voice in any matter of national importance without there being a conflict of interest?

Zuma attempted to redeem himself against the raft of allegations surfacing against him when he dwelt on the subject of tender corruption this week, estimated to cost the country R6 billion a year. But no-one takes this seriously until he answers questions about his own role in the arms scandal and related issues, such as the R200 million upgrade to his home at Nklandla.

“Who in their right minds could have approved the expenditure of more than R200 million? And to do it in that area, where you have this nice place standing up and just around there the squalor and poverty,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu told The Star this week.

Vancouver Riot 2011
– VIII from cabbit
Flickr.com

What do Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Algeria all have in common?

Apart from violent street protests or outright revolution, they are the world’s most profligate printers of money.

The Johannesburg-based and Austrian-leaning economic research house ETM Analytics recently put out some research that looks at the economic triggers behind social upheaval. Rather than looking at the more obvious political causes of violent revolution, the research shows that those countries with the money printing presses in overdrive are also those experiencing – or about to experience – massive social tension.

Take a look at the accompanying graph and make your own deductions. It’s no surprise that Syria tops the list, with a Continuous Commodity Index (CCI) inflation rate of 60% since the start of 2010. Next comes Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and Argentina with CCI inflation of 30-40% over the same period.

It’s true that apart from Syria, none of these countries have experienced anything like the kind of upheaval in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. Not yet, at any rate.

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Kimberly diamond mine
Source: Creative Commons

Something from the archive (2010) when Kieron was up in Congo…

Naomi Campbell is in the ridiculous position of having to give testimony at the war crimes trial of former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor on the grounds that she received a blood diamond from him. One might question the company she keeps, but on the diamond issue she should tell her inquisitors to go to hell.

Blood Diamond was a fun movie and no doubt had elements of truth to it. Leonardo di Caprio’s South Africa accent was passable (actually he portrayed an ex-Rhodesian who had moved onto bigger, badder battles fighting the white African cause wherever that calling took him). His real crime was attempting to smuggle diamonds supposedly obtained by slave labour and destined for the grand arms bazaar that turned countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia into giant, open-air slaughter houses. A somewhat embarrassing sub-text to this story is that it was a company of South African mercenaries, called Executive Outcomes, that brought peace to Sierra Leone in the 1990s, allowing 300,000 refugees to return home safely before the World Bank forced the bankrupt government of the time to terminate its contract with the company. The result? Aluta continua (“the struggle goes on”) as they used to say in Mozambique, as the warlords recaptured lost ground and the blood diamond trade flourished once more. If there were no diamonds in Sierra Leone, the warlords would have traded cassava, cows or rhino horn.

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www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/ryan-k1.1.1.html

Photo: Creative Commons

South Africans are pouring into Ghana, the world’s fastest-growing economy, with a growth rate of 14.4% last year.

Stroll through any town in Ghana and it is impossible to miss the South African presence. There are Engen garages, Stanbic branches and ATMs in all the major towns and MTN signs are as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola. The 21,000m2 Accra Mall, recently sold by private equity group Actis to the Pretoria-based Atterbury Property Group for $65-million (for an 85% share), would not look out of place in Centurion or Sandton. Three of the biggest tenants in the mall are Game, Mr Price and a Shoprite that stocks a range of South African products at prices that would not seem out of place in some of the more expensive European capitals.