POLITICAL SCEPTICISM
JONNY STEINBERG: Masses do not rally to technocracy’s flag
‘The alliance against Zuma is exciting and new. It has no name and no permanent membership’
Communism, Lenin once said, "cannot be built without a fund of knowledge, technology and culture, but they are in the possession of bourgeois specialists. Among them the majority do not approve of the Soviet regime, but without them we cannot build communism." President Jacob Zuma is no Lenin and his project is not to build communism. But he does face a similar dilemma. His overarching aim is to use large-scale public investments to enrich a shifting group of outsiders; traditional leaders, provincial power barons and members of his family. But many of those with the expertise to run the state apparatus and the financial sector find his project abhorrent and will not co-operate with it. Hence, Lenin’s dilemma is Zuma’s: those with the knowledge and the technology to execute his dream are its enemies. This fight — between Zuma’s efforts to bend a technocracy to his will and the effort to stop him — has taken front stage in SA’s public life.The alliance arrayed against Zuma is excitin...
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