South Africa

JOHANNESBURG – Political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki says South Africa is being de-industrialised and turned into a welfare state because of an alliance between the black political elite and the poor. "There is an alliance between the black middle class and the poor, this tells you how the poor are being bought off... they are grant recipients," Mbeki says, who is former president Thabo Mbeki's brother. He was delivering a lecture: "What has the ANC achieved in nearly two decades?" at the University of the Witwatersrand. "There are two primary political controllers of South Africa. The under-class are the single largest voting block of South Africa," he said. Political power rested between the black political elite and the black poor. Mbeki says there is something wrong with the way the political elite is managing South Africa. It is the political elite who determined how the country developed. Under the ANC, three social groups had emerged. They are: the capitalists or bourgeoisie, the political elite or bureaucratic bourgeoisie, and the under-class or unemployed. "We have a unique political system in South Africa. It's controlled by the black middle class [political elite], but it has an alliance with the poor or the under-class," Mbeki says. The objective of the political elite is to maximise consumption of the black middle class and to retain the monopoly on political power. However, its weakness is that it depended on the vote of the under-class, which did not own productive assets, he says. "The ANC has been driving a consumer revolution at the expense of production." Mbeki says the political elite's private consumption was being funded by state revenue and had become a burden on taxpayers. "It's becoming clear where the bottleneck sits and where the problems are," he says. "The consumption of the black elite is unsustainable and has to be reversed." Mbeki says the capitalists needed to be brought into the loop. This group of society was defending itself by moving capital out of South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) went to court seeking to remove from public display a painting of President Jacob Zuma with his genitals exposed, saying the work is symbolic of the lingering racial oppression of apartheid. Proceedings were halted after a bizzare scene where Gcina Malindi, lawyer for the ANC, broke down in tears when a judge asked him how can the court halt viewing of an image widely distributed on the Internet. The portrait shows Zuma in a pose mimicking Soviet-era posters of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, chest thrust out, arm raised to the side, coat tail flowing in the wind. It has stirred one of the country's most heated political debates in years with a divide growing on racial lines over whether the image is symbolic of Zuma's failings or demeans the dignity of an African leader. "From where I am sitting, that picture is racist. It is disrespectful. It is crude and it is rude," Gwede Mantashe, the secretary-general of the ANC told Reuters this week. He says the more black South Africans forgive and forget, the more they get a kick in the teeth. The former liberation movement ANC came to office 18 years ago when apartheid ended, pledging to end the economic inequalities that grew out of decades of white minority rule.

CAPE TOWN – The Presidency says it is “shocked and disgusted” at the painting by Brett Murray depicting President Jacob Zuma in an offensive manner. The painting on display at the Goodman gallery has sparked national debate on the issue of freedom of expression and the right to dignity. “We are amazed at the crude and offensive manner in which this artist denigrates the person and the office of the President of the Republic of South Africa,” Zuma’s spokesperson, Mac Maharaj, says. “Nobody has the right to violate the dignity and rights of others while exercising their own. Other than his position as head of State and as president of the ruling party, President Zuma, as a citizen, has a right to human dignity, which is enshrined in the Constitution. No human being deserves to be denigrated in this shocking manner.” Maharaj says The Presidency is also concerned that the painting perpetuates a shocking new culture by some sections of the artistic world of using vulgar methods of communication regarding leading figures in the country, in particular the President.

CAPE TOWN – Parliament’s portfolio committee on police approved draft legislation to restructure the Hawks after amending it to make the elite unit answerable to the Minister and not the national commissioner. The last-minute change was brought on the advice of Parliamentary law advisers, who say keeping the unit under the command of the commissioner will leave the Bill vulnerable to another Constitutional Court challenge. The Bill, an amendment to the South African Police Service Act, was drafted in response to a court ruling last year that found the Hawks, or Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), was not sufficiently independent. Legal adviser Nthuthuzelo Vanara says the issue of the reporting line of the head of the directorate has not been clarified. The national commissioner could claim that the head should report to him or her. “It would compromise the structural independence of the head of the DPCI.” The Bill was then changed to state explicitly that the head of the Hawks would report to the Police Minister. The issue was repeatedly raised in public hearings on the Bill in April. Legal and security experts warned that the unit would not be seen as independent if it answered to the commissioner – essentially a political appointment. All political parties voted in favour of the final version, with the exception of the Democratic Alliance’s Dianne Kohler-Barnard, who needed to consult further with her party

CAPE TOWN – Justice Minister Jeff Radebe has unveiled an initiative to transform State legal services. “[This was done] to have one set of norms and standards for the legal profession,” he said in Johannesburg at a New Age briefing on the transformation of the justice system. He says the new policies aim to address the need for efficient, coordinated legal services, and to promote the values and obligations arising from the Constitution. This is contained in the Legal Practice Bill that Radebe tabled in Parliament. Radebe says women and previously disadvantaged individuals are being overlooked within the profession. He also says while the State is a large consumer of legal services in the country, State legal services are hampered by a lack of a comprehensive set of rules governing how litigation services are dispensed, acquired, managed and monitored. “It was evident that the cake was not shared,” he says.

Africa & the world

SUDAN – Sudan and South Sudan agreed to restart talks with the aim of ending hostilities and settling disputes after border clashes scuppered an earlier round of negotiations. The two armies clashed in a disputed oil region near the poorly drawn border, coming closer to all-out war than at any time since South Sudan's independence last July. The fighting prompted Sudan to say it is pulling out of the African Union-brokered talks, which were due to tackle issues including oil export payments, delineation of the border, debt and the respective status of each other's citizens. African Union mediator Thabo Mbeki met the presidents of both countries in an attempt to revive negotiations. "The government of South Sudan requested for a meeting to convene as soon as possible...We agreed to recommence negotiations on May 29," the office of top negotiator Pagan Amum told Reuters in a statement. The UN Security Council had endorsed an African Union resolution on May 2 that threatened both sides with sanctions unless they stopped fighting and resumed negotiations. Western diplomats do not expect a quick breakthrough as the positions of the nations still seem wide apart. Sudan has says it wants to make security issues a priority and accuses the South of supporting rebels in Sudan's border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. South Sudan denies this and has accused Sudan of bombing its territory several times since the UN Security Council resolution was approved. The sides have also failed to agree how much the landlocked South should pay to export its oil through Sudan. South Sudan took three-quarters of the oil output of the formerly united country when it became independent, but the export pipelines run through Sudan.

KHARTOUM – Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir says Sudan wants a lasting peace with South Sudan but Juba needs to end support for rebels in Sudan’s border land. Oil, security and frontier disputes ignited border clashes last month and for a while raised fears of full-blown war in one of Africa’s most significant oil regions. South Sudan became independent in July under a 2005 peace agreement with Khartoum that ended decades of civil war. But the neighbours failed to mark the joint border and agree how much landlocked South Sudan should pay to export its oil through Sudan. Bashir met with former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is trying to bring both sides back to the negotiation table at the African Union.