"Provoking Emotions" = "Political Intolerance"

I guess it's good or bad, depending on if you are in power or not:

S. African President Walks Out of Parliament Amid Chaos

[...] Early this year, the public protector ordered Zuma to pay back to the state a portion of the $23 million used for security upgrades to the home. Zuma was in parliament to explain his response to the public protector’s report. “I have responded appropriately and I am saying people who did the upgrades at Nkandla, they are the ones who always determine who pays, when to pay,” he explained.

But the leader of the newly formed Economic Freedom Fighters, (EFF) Julius Malema, who was expelled from the ruling ANC partly for undermining Zuma’s authority, demanded a precise response. “The question we are asking today and we are not going to leave here before we get an answer, is when are you paying the money?” he stated.

When President Zuma insisted that he had already answered the question, there was commotion as EFF members refused to take instructions from the speaker of the House of Representatives.

It is at this point that Zuma decided to walk out. The speaker then temporarily adjourned parliament and called in riot police to eject EFF members, who violently refused and instead started chanting "pay back the money."

Chaos: scuffling, shoving

When it was time for parliament to resume, ANC members of parliament charged towards the EFF members, leading to a scuffle as they pushed and shoved each other.

[...]

The ruling ANC is now calling on parliament to slap the EFF members with the strongest sanction possible. In a strongly worded statement, the ANC warned the EFF not to provoke emotions, saying this could lead to political intolerance with dire consequences to the country’s democracy.

A bit ironic, that last statement. When the ANC was in political opposition, they did their share of provoking emotions. But now that they are in power, provoking emotions is a bad and dangerous thing.

Here is an earlier post I did, about the money issue the president is being questioned about:

What South African Taxpayer's Money Buys

I'm no fan of Julius Malema. But taxpayers everywhere have the right to question how the government is spending their tax dollars.
     

What South African Taxpayer's Money Buys

Really nice chicken coops, among other things:

Nkandla style – don’t worry, it is for security

In March 2014, public protector Thuli Madonsela found that president Jacob Zuma and his family unduly benefited from upgrades made to his private Nkandla homestead, which cost the taxpayer around R246 million.

According to the public protector’s report titled “Secure in Comfort”, government built a visitors centre, cattle kraal and chicken run, swimming pool and an amphitheatre for the president and his family in his private home.

Madonsela said that this clearly shows that Zuma and his family unduly benefited from the upgrades. However, government had a simple explanation for it all – security.

Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said that the cattle kraal, fire pool (seen by some as a new swimming pool) and all other features are “essential security features which ensures physical security and effective operation of security equipment.”

Who can dispute Radebe’s argument? Chickens setting off alarms – security risk. Not having a fire pool in case of a large fire – security risk. Not having an amphitheatre and having to travel on South Africa’s pothole ridden roads to visit a place of entertainment – security risk.

In fact, security is such an elegant excuse when explaining questionable decisions that it should not come as any surprise that this excuse has been used by government previously. [...]

Lookit that Chicken Coop. A real work of art, that. Would love to see it close-up.




Also see:

What Nkandla’s millions could have bought South Africans

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela released the Nkandla report this week, which showed that the estimated total cost of improvements to President Zuma’s Nkandla home is R246,631,303.

Madonsela’s report found that the total cost of the Nkandla project included:

Total payment to contractors R161,418,824;
Value of contractor payments certificates, certified but not yet paid, R3,672,748;
Total payment to professional consultants R50,352,842; and
Cost estimate for phase three, excluding consultants’ fees R31,186,887.

According to the public protector’s report a critical service delivery program was shelved and money diverted to upgrade Zuma’s homestead.

“Funds were reallocated from the inner city regeneration project and the dolomite risk management programme of the department of public works,” Mandonsela said in her voluminous report.

“Due to lack of proper demand management and planning, service delivery programs of the department of public works were negatively affected.”

The homestead has been at the centre of controversy after it emerged that the public works department had approved upgrades to the President’s KwaZulu-Natal homestead.
What could the Nkandla money have been better used for?

South Africa can benefit tremendously from better IT infrastructure, a more connected society, and better education.

Here is what the money spent on the Nkandla upgrades could have bought South Africans: [...]

Ouch. A long list. I wonder what affect, if any, it will have on the next election?
     

Did Communists take over South Africa?

Not so easy to answer. Yes and no? Perhaps more no than yes?

Jenkins: When Communists Took Over South Africa

[...] Two decades later Mandela's ANC has indeed become a party of revolutionaries turned business owners and financiers.

In their well-researched 2012 book "Who Rules South Africa?" the journalists Martin Plaut and Paul Holden found that three-quarters of cabinet members had outside business or financial interests as did 60% the regime's 400 members of parliament. They also report that, in 2011, South Africa's auditor-general found that in the impoverished Eastern Cape, ancestral home of Mandela and many other top ANC leaders, 74% of government contracts went to companies owned by state officials and their families.

At the moment, South Africa's likeliest next president is Cyril Ramaphosa, a former militant union leader and Mandela protégé who serves as ANC deputy president. According to Forbes, Mr. Ramaphosa is worth $625 million—three times Mitt Romney's wealth. [...]

If South Africa continues to have free elections, I wonder how long Ultra-rich ANC members will continue to get elected?

I'd posted exactly one year ago, about a split in the ANC being a possibility. This article explains some of the history and reasons why that may happen.
     

South Africa: Will the ANC split?

If it does, it could be a good thing:

Is South Africa following the path of 'the strongman'?

South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, was once a post-apartheid hero. Now it is the latest caricature of African bad governance, and it no longer resonates with the people. At its upcoming meeting, the party must embrace internal debate and reject economic nationalism.

[...]

The regional cost of South Africa's backward drift is significant. The country's gross domestic product, $408 billion in 2011, accounted for roughly one-third of the combined economic output of all sub-Saharan Africa, yet the country's economy is growing at less than half the pace of the continent's economy.

During the ANC's two decades in power, health-care services have declined sharply. And although the government spends 20 percent of state funds on education, quality in the classroom is now among the lowest in Africa – and fewer than half of students finish the equivalent of high school.

Despite the rapid growth of a black middle class aligned to the ANC, the gap between rich and poor has widened. Low productivity and a failure to diversify the economy away from its dependence on mining have resulted in a perpetual trade deficit.

Both Moody's and Standard & Poor's downgraded the country's sovereign credit rating this fall in the wake of rolling wildcat strikes in South Africa's mining sector. That disturbance was punctuated by the massacre of 34 protesting miners by police in August – the worst incident of state violence since the end of apartheid. There are almost weekly local protests over poor delivery of basic necessities such as water and electricity.

ANC leaders have further hobbled the economy with uncertainty by refusing to end their flirtation with nationalizing at least parts of the mining sector, despite party studies concluding such a move would be disastrous to the country's fiscal prospects. Equally troubling are the party's repeated attempts to erode the independence of the judiciary and national prosecutor and to curb the media.

In a sure sign that the party is out of ideas, it has begun couching its economic strategy in terms of a "second transition," much the way the old Soviet Union floated successive five-year plans.

The great fear among pessimists of South Africa's move from white rule to democracy has always been that the country would go the way of the rest of postcolonial Africa. Like Zimbabwe, Kenya, and others before it, South Africa has reached the fragile point when the ruling party's claim to power no longer resonates with the people.

The ANC remains a liberation movement more than a ruling political party. Ordinary South Africans want jobs, schools, and safe neighborhoods. The ANC wants party loyalty among its ranks and supporters. Unnerved by a restive public, the party has turned to manipulating populist causes and silencing dissent. The people aren't buying it, but there's nowhere for them to turn.

[...]

To the ANC's embarrassment, the Western Cape, the one province ruled by an opposition party, outperforms the rest of the country in nearly every social index. The Democratic Alliance is predominantly white, however, with all the baggage that implies for national electoral appeal in a country still scarred by a history of violent minority rule.

For now, a change in leadership appears unlikely. No serious competitor emerged during the party's nominating process to challenge President Jacob Zuma. He's a wily politician who harnessed a populist backlash against his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, to deflect charges of rape and corruption and assume his party's mantle five years ago.

But South Africa is not without safeguards and the promise of a brighter future. Whereas similar conditions in other states led to military coups d'état and civil wars, South Africa has a strong Constitution, a vibrant civil society, and a rich protest tradition. It is unimaginable that the ANC could ever preserve its power through strong-arm tactics and constitutional violations and get away with it in the medium- to-long term, as President Robert Mugabe has done in neighboring Zimbabwe for decades.

Ironically, the best buffer may be the ANC itself. It is an article of faith among political observers that South Africa will remain a de facto one-party state until the ANC splits. That view holds – and the split looks increasingly inevitable.

The ANC governs in a coalition with its liberation-era partners the Communist Party and congress of trade unions. While that grouping served the cause of overthrowing apartheid, it has become steadily more strained in governing. If the alliance survives one more election cycle, it seems poised to fragment afterward. [...]

Somethings gotta give. An ANC split into two parties could make things very interesting.
     

South Africa: Everything old is new again?

Wasn't government censorship of the press one of the things that was WRONG with the Old South Africa? Isn't that what the ANC used to claim? Are they now saying censorship is OK, as long as they are the one's doing it?

SAfrica's ANC party wants tribunal for journalists

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa's governing party said Tuesday that the country needs a special tribunal to regulate the work of journalists, a proposal that has drawn sharp criticism from local and international media organizations.

The tribunal would be given powers to rule on media content and to impose unspecified penalties on journalists.

African National Congress spokesman Jackson Mthembu said the party has found numerous instances of news stories that were intentionally damaging to subjects' reputations and dignity.

"Your freedom does not supersede the other freedoms that are there," Jackson told journalists Tuesday. "We say there must be punishment when journalists mess up with reputations and dignity of members of the society."

South African journalists have launched a campaign to fight what they say is an attempt to curtail media freedoms in a nation known for one of Africa's freest and most open constitutions.

Other legislation under consideration would allow South Africa's government to classify a broad range of material that is currently not secret. Under the new law, it would be illegal to leak or to publish information deemed classified by the government, and the offense would be punishable by imprisonment.

On Tuesday, the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) said it will do what ever it can to stop the proposed "Protection of Information Bill" and media tribunal.

"We are not opposing the ANC government but the bill and tribunal," said Guy David, secretary general of SANEF.

When the old, white ruled government of South Africa censored the South African press, outrage was expressed worldwide, and boycotts and sanctions were imposed on the country.

Now, years later, we have a black ruled government, proposing similar or even worse censorship of the press. Where is the outrage, the world-wide indignation? Will we even hear a peep out of the international press about this?

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.