Quote of the week
Over the last 150 days we have learned much about the power of the habitual in post-millennial, post-apartheid South Africa. We have heard it in the grumbling, cavilling, quarrelling and grousing about the logic (or lack of) of government decrees. We have also seen it in the defiance of logic among the many bourgeois folks who mistook their entitlement for rights, whether to go running, do yoga on the beach, surf, get takeaway coffees, or to purchase items subjected to restricted trade… We saw it in the contradictory messages relayed by official government channels, in the conflict between some experts advising government, between government officials and such experts, and in the ways in which opposition parties contradicted themselves as they opposed government proclamations.
Johannesburg Review of Books
Concerned African Scholars Publication – The Politics of Jacob Zuma
ACAS Bulletin 84 – The Politics of Jacob Zuma – http://concernedafricascholars.org/bulletin/84/
Jacob Zuma, the President of Africa’s most powerful democracy since April 2009, and the recently chosen ‘African President of the Year’, arouses strong passions from his supporters and detractors. A longtime ANC official from a humble peasant background in what is now Kwazulu-Natal province, Zuma was picked by the ANC to be the country’s deputy president under Thabo Mbeki in 1999. The men, close colleagues during exile (and during the early years of negotiating with the Apartheid government), appeared to only enjoy a friendly rivalry at that point. So when it came to predicting who would lead South Africa when Mbeki departed the national stage, most observers did not think of Zuma as a serious contender. Read the rest of the introduction here.
Table on Contents
Read the entire Bulletin in PDF (2MB)
Introduction: The Politics of Jacob Zuma | Article in PDF
By Sean Jacobs
Presidentialism and its Pitfalls: Towards a theory of how not to understand the Zuma Presidency | Article in PDF
By Suren Pillay
Scoring an own-goal | Article in PDF
By Peter Dwyer
The Zuma era in ANC history: New crisis or new beginning? | Article in PDF
By Raymond Suttner
Why is the ‘100% Zulu Boy’ so popular? | Article in PDF
By Anonymous
Populism and the National Democratic Revolution in South Africa | Article in PDF
By Ari Sitas
Jacob Zuma and the evanescent legacy of nineteenth-century Zulu cosmopolitanism and nationalism | Article in PDF
By Hlonipha Mokoena
Tradition’s desire: The politics of culture in the rape trial of Jacob Zuma | Article in PDF
By Thembisa Waetjen and Gerhard Maré
Jacob Zuma’s Robben Island legacy | Article in PDF
By Fran Buntman
Review: Zunami! The 2009 South African Elections, edited by Roger Southall and John Daniel | Article in PDF
By Sean Jacobs
