Word: powers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...even some of the more modest predictions about Jacob Zuma's rise to power had been correct, South Africa would be an empty, corrupt dictatorship by now. Back in 2006, South African memoirist Rian Malan ended his dismal assessment of the nation's prospects ("Not civil war, but sad decay") in British magazine the Spectator by asking: "Anyone want a house here?" A year ago, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said he was "deeply saddened" when Zuma staged a party coup against his predecessor Thabo Mbeki, "deeply disturbed" that both had used institutions of state in their struggle and warned that...
...even accepts blame. "These challenges are based in reality," the 67-year-old told TIME in a rare interview. "And it's only when you admit there have been deficiencies and weaknesses that you make sense to the people, who can see them for themselves. After 15 years [in power], people are saying: Where is the delivery...
Zuma agrees too that the ANC is in crisis, alienated from its people by power and riches. "The success of liberation ... tests the clarity" of even the best African revolutionaries, he says. "Many liberation movements have turned into something else and abandoned what they were. The ANC came to that point ... where we might have fallen." The fix, he says, is in "renewal ... paying attention to [the ANC's] principles [but] talking about ... how we have to do things differently." A presidential adviser underlines the new tone. "The big difference today is that now we have a leadership that says...
...President has also expanded accountability. That's necessary, he says, because with the ANC consistently winning around 65% at the polls, elections are not much of a check on the party. "We are too strong. Such support and power can intoxicate the party and lead you into believing that you know it all. You take things for granted. [The party] ends up unwieldy and in a mess." So Zuma appointed a close adviser, Collins Chabane, to a new ministry inside the presidency to monitor performance. He set up a planning commission, also inside the presidency, to enforce a consistent long...
...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 ANC member. "That's saying: 'No more jobs for pals. It's jobs for those who can actually do them.' And there is no evidence to suggest that Zuma is going to do that...