notthenews

The split in the ANC in South Africa may be a good thing. I was a bit wary of the politics that allowed the incumbent president to be removed in order to make way via a ‘temporary’ stand-in for the next man in line. Otherwise, it is always the case that ruling parties in power too long tend to get complacent and arrogant and that is not exclusive to Africa – the UK’s Labour party and the Conservatives under Thatcher come to mind. What is more scary though, is that in Africa, it tends to lead to downward spiral as experienced by many sub-Saharan countries – Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and now being followed in full technicolor in Zimbabwe. The other countries apart from Zimbabwe are on a good path to recovery and that has come about, in some part, by the erosion of the ruling party base and the education of the electorate to the dangers of power hogging. Democracy and multi-party politics have many wrongs, but they are the lesser ones to the alternatives!

South Africa has not learnt that lesson yet and maybe this development will help them avoid the sickness that has plagued so many of their neighbours in the past. Maybe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7695492.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7706366.stm.

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This entry was posted by admin on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.