Word: mbeki
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...world's biggest economy. Another is a global banking collapse. South Africa has a third trigger: the departure of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel. When Manuel, 53, resigned on Sept. 23 last year, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange fell 4% in minutes. Actually, Manuel wasn't going anywhere. President Thabo Mbeki had been ousted in an internal party coup a few days earlier and protocol demanded Manuel step down before being reappointed by Mbeki's successor. When that was explained, the markets recovered quickly...
...feisty and outspoken. We chatted about the old days, about how she had managed to negotiate a visit to meet Mandela in prison on Robben Island off Cape Town in 1967, about what had made him such a unifying leader. Inevitably, that drew comparisons with today's A.N.C. "[Thabo] Mbeki [Mandela's successor as president, who was forced out of office by his own party] has made so many bad decisions," she said. "It's been an enormous disappointment...
...listed Mbeki's questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS, his inept ministers, corruption that she said "was everywhere you look," his support for Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe ("so distressing") and the black empowerment program which, while intended to help those discriminated against under apartheid, has, she claimed, succeeded only in making a few of the politically connected very rich, and had "driven one million white South Africans out of the country, skilled people we needed...
...color. People now wonder what the point is of educating their children to be a doctor or an engineer if the job will go to someone less qualified. They [the A.N.C.] have been unable to move on from the past: everything has a racial background. If I criticize Mbeki because of his disastrous policies on AIDS, it is because I am a racist...
...months after we spoke, Mbeki was fired by the A.N.C. and the party split in two. In a general election due in a few months, the A.N.C. will face its most formidable array of opposition parties to date. It is a development that would undoubtedly please Suzman. Even so, her passing - and the memory of her lifelong struggle as peaceful objector - casts all of today's South African politicians in a less than flattering light. Even faced with a stronger opposition, few doubt that the next South African president will be Jacob Zuma, the A.N.C. president...