When a leader says he will implement ANC policies if he becomes president and you pillory him, then one has to ask what policies Zuma should implement if not those of the ANC. The FM's concern is business, not the poor and unemployed for whom freedom, democracy or the so-called economic miracle have no meaning.
Your analysis lacks depth. Current government (not ANC) policies have not delivered a better life for all. Government has no industrial or trade policy, public-service delivery is ineffective, corruption by rent-seeking politicians and senior civil servants is the order of the day. Parliament has been turned into a rubber stamp of the executive and the judiciary prostitutes its independence.
The Public Investment Corp and other development finance institutions have become corporate finance institutions to finance deals for cronies. Examples are the Telkom deal and the Land Bank. This is the "prudence" of President Thabo Mbeki and finance minister Trevor Manuel. There are no miracles by the finance minister except the SA Revenue Service's effectiveness in collecting taxes. Manuel has been distributing funds to departments with little capacity to spend and to parastatals that, in a boom, have failed to perform - to the detriment of the poor. A budget surplus is a shame in the midst of babies dying in hospitals, unemployment, and lack of sanitation.
As for the arms deal, journalists have been parading their ignorance. Key questions that have propelled the support for Zuma are not asked by the media - for example: the role of Armscor in the tenders and final procurement; the absence of reference to the president as the cabinet chairman on defence procurement; and a Scorpions meeting to discuss prosecutions to influence the ANC policy conference. Such questions are asked by ordinary people.
Regarding Zuma's sexual history, you will be shocked if you put the whole cabinet to the same test. As for Zwelinzima Vavi, he speaks not as an individual but as a voice of Cosatu, its members and working people in general - most of whom do not read the FM.
You criticise Zuma's level of education and economic knowledge. Winston Churchill barely had a Standard 8 and another British prime minister, John Major, had no matric equivalent. Paul Volcker and Allan Greenspan, former US Federal Reserve chairmen, together with ratings agencies with all their education, are held responsible for the sub prime crisis that has cost the world's investors trillions of dollars. The economic education of the current president has not created jobs or led to any intelligible industrial policy, credible skills development programme and public-service delivery.
Then there's the tactic of using the gender issue to address political differences. A woman president must emerge as a credible individual with ability, not one run by a puppet master. The ANC Women's League saw through this. The proposal of having a woman president coming from under the trousers of the president is to effectively create two centres of power that has led to political gridlock elsewhere.
There will be change if Zuma becomes president: the ANC, not people in smoke-filled rooms, will drive government policy. Hopefully the separation-of-powers principle enshrined in the constitution will be practised and rule through fear and patronage will be a thing of the past, otherwise I am afraid the poor will rise and drive those in power out.
Ngcukana is a business development director at Investec Asset Management
Ranking the Analysts 2009
