Word: africas
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Zuma is also a fix for another long-standing flaw in many of Africa's liberation movements. Though they claim to represent the masses, Africa's revolutions were mostly led by Western-educated black élites. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's pan-Africanist, earned a B.A., and M.A., in the U.S. Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe is a former teacher who was raised, in part, by the Jesuits and earned four university degrees by correspondence in prison. Mbeki too spent years in exile studying Marxism in Britain and the Soviet Union. Even Mandela was a chief's son and one of the country...
Zuma, in fact, seems most comfortable at his most African, drawing political lessons from folksy tales of his upbringing and, at rallies, dancing in leopard skins and singing the doggedly politically incorrect Zulu anthem "Bring Me My Machine Gun." As Gordin says, he is "South Africa's first real African President." "I am a Zulu," says Zuma, in an echo of his predecessor's famous "I am an African" speech. "I should not be trying to be an American or more British. I must be a Zulu." (See Jacob Zuma's profile in the 2008 TIME...
Just a Beginning Can he succeed? The problems South Africa faces would challenge even the best- run nation, and South Africa is far from that. State institutions have been hurt by the departure or exclusion of apartheid-era workers and their replacement with officials too often appointed for their political connections. Zuma's aide says the biggest obstacles to success are "corruption and ineptness in the bureaucracy." But reforming the civil service would mean turning on many of those who put him in power. "There is one very bold thing that can be done," says Andrew Feinstein, a dissident former...
...even if Zuma were to keep surprising, circumstances are against him. He came to power just as South Africa entered its first recession since the end of apartheid in 1994, cutting tax revenues and spending plans. But his supporters in the labor unions are in no mood to cut Zuma any slack. His first months in power have seen a wave of strikes and riots over pay and poor government. In October, Zuma fired the entire ANC-run authority of the northern township of Sakhile after weeks of violent protests over poor service delivery...
...better move," he says. "It's a wake-up call. 'Deal with this! Pay serious attention!' If we do not deal with these things now, people will lose confidence in the ANC." That is the promise of Jacob Zuma. That after half a century in which so many of Africa's independence hopes soured into arrogant dictatorships, the new leader of its proudest democracy accepts that if he wants the job, he's got to earn...