With his time as leader of the ANC running out, President Jacob Zuma is gambling that a raft of populist measures can bolster his grassroots support and ensure his political survival. "Radical economic transformation" was the theme of Zuma’s state of the nation address (Sona) on Thursday delivered amid scenes of MPs brawling and security forces imposing an unprecedented lockdown outside Parliament. Zuma repeated pledges by the ANC to use the state to boost black economic empowerment (BEE), speed up land reform and strengthen the government’s role in the mining industry. "Time is running out for Zuma; time is running out for the ANC," Tinyiko Maluleke, a political analyst at the University of Pretoria, said by phone on Friday. "That for me is at the heart of why you have ‘radical economic transformation’." This Sona was the first since the ANC suffered its worst electoral performance, when it lost control of Pretoria and Johannesburg in an August municipal elections that saw its supp...
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