Word: south
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...expected to win a fourth consecutive term in South Africa's parliamentary and presidential elections on April 22. But for the first time since it came to power with the end of apartheid in 1994, that result is not guaranteed, and by any measure - popularity, membership, moral authority - the party is in decline. Its leaders are embroiled in a series of scandals involving both corruption and ineptitude. As a government, it has failed to stem raging violent crime and the world's largest HIV/AIDS epidemic. It has presided over an economic boom that has made millionaires of a well-connected...
Zuma's supporters insist he is just the man to fight for the interests of those left behind in South Africa's first years of freedom. Still, there are questions over Zuma's commitment to racial reconciliation - famously, in a country still wracked by racial violence, he chose the Zulu war anthem, "Bring Me My Machine Gun" as a theme song - and about his competence and judgment. He refuses to answer questions on policy, deferring instead to the ANC's executive committee. His coyness may be wise: those opinions he has aired have been startling. On trial for rape...
...fighters repressed by a regime whose racism recalled the worst of European imperialism. Mandela, locked up for 27 years only to emerge with forgiveness for his oppressors, was a secular saint. There was no equivocation here. With the ANC and Mandela on one side and apartheid on the other, South Africa was literally a question of black and white...
...which this identity crisis is expressed is in the modern ANC look - the mix of bling and camo worn by the Prada proletariat on display in East London. At a more serious level, while business, civil society and the press provide far more of a check on South Africa's government than they do in, say, Zimbabwe, the party's critics see the same bad underlying dynamics at work. Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC MP who resigned in 2001 in protest at the way his party was frustrating an investigation into a corrupt $5 billion arms agreement (the same deal...
...fair, the ANC is far from the worst example of a revolutionary movement lapsed into self-enrichment and autocracy. But because South Africa is the continent's biggest economy and natural leader, the ANC is a role model and has influence beyond South Africa's borders. That's not always been a good thing. Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as President in 1999, tried to forge a middle way between revolution and democracy by calling on the ANC to embrace a "democratic revolution" in government. The approach proved schizophrenic. Mbeki the democrat adopted liberal economics, oversaw impressive growth and won plaudits...