Former African Union chairman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was here, there and everywhere last week. The presidential hopeful addressed adoring crowds carefully selected by the ANC Women's League in North West and elsewhere as she ramped up her campaign.In a cheap, cynical publicity stunt, she swept into Marikana, in North West, scene of the murder of 34 mineworkers by police in 2012, to lay wreaths at the site. Mineworkers prevented her from doing so, asking a pertinent question: Where has she and her organisation been in the past five years of no justice or recompense for the workers' families? Why has she not raised her voice against the ANC government's failure to act decisively on key issues of poverty and justice in the area? Dlamini-Zuma visited North West as Stats SA released a report measuring poverty trends in South Africa between 2006 and 2015. It made for chilling reading: in 2015 a quarter of the population - 13.8 million people - were living in extreme poverty and below the ...

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