EDITORIAL: Jacob Zuma’s solitary stand at WEF
It was bizarre to see Zuma more favourably received at the WEF than by Cosatu
President Jacob Zuma gave the main World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos in January a miss and he skipped 2016’s WEF Africa meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. Whether he was trying to dodge difficult questions from global investors and peers or simply did not care was not clear. But the president chose the occasion of last week’s WEF Africa meeting in Durban, leading a delegation of no fewer than 18 of SA’s cabinet ministers, which included his brand-new finance minister, Malusi Gigaba. It was an apposite moment for Zuma and Gigaba to set out their stall and try to undo some of the damage Zuma did with his midnight cabinet reshuffle in April. They made the most of it, taking centre stage and using opportunities, formal and informal, to try to reassure global and local business leaders that SA was on the right track. Whether they succeeded is not at all clear. They were not helped by the fact that, in contrast to previous WEF meetings, government had to go it alone. The business and la...
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