WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM AFRICA DAILY DIARY
OVERHEARD AT DURBAN: When being booed is, well, just great!
Tim Cohen on the patricians, the posers, the proselytisers and the platitudes at the World Economic Forum Africa
So, time for the World Economic Forum (WEF) Africa again. The patricians, the posers, the proselytisers, the platitudes and the proletariat. Actually, not the proletariat. The security at WEF events is really a sight to behold. The blue lights and the sirens and the waving police officers weirdly give the event a sense of grandeur. The security is a mixture of high-tech card recognition, high fences and high police presence. Durban as a venue is a novelty, but the security for the 10 heads of state, 18 South African cabinet ministers and more than 1,000 participants is a constant. The WEF Africa has started to move around instead of being locked down in Cape Town and presumably Durban was something of a nod to President Jacob Zuma’s home province. Unlike at Davos in 2017, Zuma was in full force. He arrived looking energetic and enthused, and after making some generic comments was asked inevitably about the protests at the weekend which prevented him from addressing, of all things, a...
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