The ANC is structurally broken: that’s the bottom line. The same sort of intrigue that happens in the Chinese Communist Party ruling circles happens in the ANC

The ANC is structurally broken: that’s the bottom line. The same sort of intrigue that happens in the Chinese Communist Party ruling circles happens in the ANC (not surprising since both are organised under the same principles), meaning that the leader has unfettered power until the next ANC elective conference. Mbeki (competent but with crazy ideas about AIDS that were his undoing) and Zuma were allowed to run amok. Add cadre deployment to the mix, and you can see why South Africa is such a mess…the democratic constitutional order is badly weakened when the electorally dominant political party is run as a personality cult. I expected Cyril Ramaphosa to be more aggressive in cleaning out the rot, and to perhaps reform the ANC structurally, but he seems very tentative…