This past week I had the opportunity to travel to three South African cities. In a sunny Durban, I attended a conference organised by the University of KwaZulu-Natal where I was on a panel discussing the role of African liberation movements in pursuit of an Africa we want. It was thought-provoking and intellectually charged.
The president also secured a firm commitment from the Saudi Arabian king of an investment of no less than $10-billion, particularly in the energy and power creation sectors. As for the fiscal cliff we are climbing with rising debt levels and depleted foreign reserves, and the likes of RW Johnson forecasting an IMF bailout – before we turn to the IMF, South Africans would rather endure another self-imposed structural adjustment as we had to do in 1995/6, when we discovered that the apartheid National Party had left us with nothing in the fiscus coffers.
There are those who say that because Ramaphosa won by only 179 votes at the ANC National Conference at Nasrec in 2017, he is hamstrung to deal effectively with the culprits in his own party. Nothing can be further from the truth. Power has shifted since Nasrec. As for the provinces and their allegiances, before the Nasrec conference the so-called Premier League constituted the bulk of the membership in the ANC and came to that conference confident of a victory. But that alliance is no more, given the betrayal of one of their own, DD Mabuza, who is now our deputy president.
oscarknysna ......your glass is cracked.....it is empty!
oscarknysna Only half empty?!? You optimist, you 😜
oscarknysna Half? No sitting on teh fence here. I am here only because Syria is not taking refugees.
oscarknysna I think the glass might have been stolen.
oscarknysna It’s broken
oscarknysna What glass?