Jacob Zuma now leads Africa’s economic powerhouse, but South Africa is a country where at least a quarter of the work force is unemployed and 1,000 people die of AIDS every day. The challenges are daunting but many impoverished South Africans believe Zuma’s personal battles and eventual electoral triumph make him well placed to empathize with their struggles and aspirations.
Zuma has been lambasted by his detractors as a con man, polygamist, and rapist but the South African electorate has, albeit provisionally, decided to suspend judgment on Zuma in exchange for the promise of an impressive performance. The result of the general election was ample proof that the vast majority of the country’s people support Zuma and the ANC. The predominantly black South African electorate has pronounced him innocent and has paid allegiance to him. Zuma understands all too well that the suspension of doubt in the South African electoral context is a quid pro quo.
South Africa under Zuma’s leadership is shaping up to play a wider global role. The country is considered a paragon of democracy on the African Continent, and its multiracial and multicultural makeup renders it a vital fulcrum to the Western world with its 15 percent white minority. It is ironic that the last African country to throw off the shackles of colonialism has metamorphosed into a trendsetter. South Africa is perhaps the only country on the continent not to have wavered in its experiment with Western-style multiparty democracy.
It is against this backdrop that the somewhat maverick figure of Zuma comes into play. On the one hand he is a populist, but on the other he is expected to avoid hubris and seek the strengthening of South Africa’s democratic institutions. Long forgotten are the bloody internecine fighting between supporters of the ruling ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party that hoisted the flag of Zulu jingoism and nationalistic zealotry. Today, Zuma ingeniously embodies the very notion of traditional Zulu national pride. He is a leader of all South Africans.
South Africa has long been a beacon of democracy in Africa, but not particularly proficient at pluralistic politics. Opposition parties come and go, but the ANC remains. Even so, the single most significant achievement of the South African opposition parties was that they were able to stave off a total ANC victory in the sense that they managed to stop the ANC from achieving the magical mark of 66.7 percent of the vote. The two-thirds majority for the ANC would have effectively turned the country into a one-party state.
Even with a two-thirds majority, political parties will continue to flourish in South Africa. What is interesting is that Zuma won the day.
The unspoken fear among whites and the West alike is that the rise of Zuma equals the “Africanization” of South Africa. Another accusation by opposition parties in South Africa is that the ANC is riddled with corruption. But South Africa’s elections proved to be a historic landmark for the country. Pak victims of anti-Taleban fight
The Christian Science Monitor yesterday commented on the refugee exodus from Swat Valley in Pakistan, saying in part:
Like water running downhill, Pakistani refugees are streaming from the mountains and valleys of the greater Swat region, where a peace agreement between militant Taleban Islamists and the central government has completely broken down.
Local officials are expecting as many as 600,000 to 800,000 displaced people — a wave that could help wash out public and government tolerance of the Taleban, or, conversely, heap more disapproval on Pakistan’s ineffective leadership. Much depends on how these refugees are treated, on how quickly and definitively the Pakistani Army moves to defeat the Taleban insurgents in the region they’re fleeing, and — if the army is successful — on what the refugees encounter once they return home. If Pakistan’s government can defuse the Taleban threat and win public confidence, terrorism will have suffered a serious blow. Public alarm over the Taleban and their extreme brand of justice is quickly escalating.
At first, the militants appealed to fellow Muslims in the untamed northwest of this struggling democracy. They won sympathy by railing against foreign infidels (the US and its allies) and against the government’s support of those infidels. They promised to restore law and order. In February, Islamabad mistakenly thought it could keep the Taleban in check through a deal that promised Islamic Shariah courts in exchange for the insurgents’ disarmament.But the Taleban’s harsh interpretation of Islamic law has since turned many against them. Horrified refugees confirm reports of public flogging, brutal killings, and the burning of schools and police headquarters.
A “paradigm shift” is now taking place, said US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton after meeting with the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan in Washington Wednesday. The Pakistan government, political opposition, and army seem to finally recognize the threat the Taleban poses to the country.
