TONY LEON: Are we heading down Zimbabwe's perilous land reform road?
'There is a contest in South Africa to see, as between Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Julius Malema, who can out-Mugabe the other on confiscating land without compensation'
Black Friday arrived on these shores in triplicate last week. First there was the chaotic retail therapy which saw smashed shopping mall windows, crashed e-commerce websites and big bargains as South Africans went shopping. Second there was Robert Mugabe's inglorious end as the 93-year-old despot gave way to a 75-year-old successor with, to be diplomatic, slender democratic credentials.Mugabe's decades of tyranny at least defied the outcome to which Thomas More - nemesis of King Henry VIII - gave voice more than 500 years ago. Mugabe, like More, is a Catholic, but unlike More, he is no saint. The Zimbabwean dictator disproved More's prophesy: "Sola mors tyrannicida est" - death is the only way to be rid of tyrants. The third, and for long-suffering South Africans, perhaps the worst instalment of Black Friday arrived late in the evening when we received our credit downgrade to junk status from S&P Global Ratings. There is a common thread between all three Black Friday events. On the ...
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