RICHARD CALLAND: Zuma is running out of political lives
'Mbete will have to choose between her loyalty to her president as one of the ANC’s “top six” leadership and her duty to the Constitution as speaker'
Like the proverbial cat with nine lives, South Africa’s scandal-ridden president, Jacob Zuma, may well have escaped yet again with his political life. This despite another resounding loss in the country’s highest court. The Constitutional Court ruled that there was no constitutional bar to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete, opting to employ a secret ballot in a no confidence vote in parliament. She’d originally asserted that she didn’t have the authority to make this decision, prompting several opposition parties – furious at Zuma’s increasingly dictatorial project of “state capture” – to take the matter to court. South Africa’s judicial system continues to hold firm. This is despite the fact that there appears to be a concerted and well coordinated campaign by a group of politicians and businessmen to undermine the integrity of state institutions as well as to exploit their weaknesses to prosecute a project of self-enrichment and rent-seeking. The campaign is pivot...
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