The South African president, Jacob Zuma, has narrowly survived a motion of no confidence against him in parliament, the most serious attempt yet to unseat him after months of growing anger over allegations of corruption and a sinking economy.

It was the sixth such vote of his increasingly beleaguered presidency, but the first involving a secret ballot, with a broad coalition of opposition parties and renegade MPs from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) falling just short of the simple majority needed to force Zuma and his cabinet to resign immediately.

The ballot counting was accompanied by scenes of singing and dancing on both sides of the assembly, as rival parties sought to project confidence. “We taught you this song, and you don’t even sing it properly,” jeered the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, dressed in signature red overalls, addressing his ANC counterparts.

The South African president, Jacob Zuma, has narrowly survived a motion of no confidence against him in parliament, the most serious attempt yet to unseat him after months of growing anger over allegations of corruption and a sinking economy.

It was the sixth such vote of his increasingly beleaguered presidency, but the first involving a secret ballot, with a broad coalition of opposition parties and renegade MPs from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) falling just short of the simple majority needed to force Zuma and his cabinet to resign immediately.

The ballot counting was accompanied by scenes of singing and dancing on both sides of the assembly, as rival parties sought to project confidence. “We taught you this song, and you don’t even sing it properly,” jeered the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, dressed in signature red overalls, addressing his ANC counterparts.

Baleka Mbete, the National Assembly’s speaker, announced the result: 198 MPs voted against, compared with 177 in favour. There were nine abstentions. “Therefore the motion of no confidence in the president is accordingly negative,” declared Mbete.

ANC MPs in parliament whooped and danced at the news.

An upbeat President Zuma arrived at the parliamentary precinct about an hour after the result was announced. “I’ve just come to say thank you to all of you. Those comrades who are in parliament needed the support from the membership. You came in your numbers to demonstrate that the ANC is there, is powerful, is big. It is difficult to defeat the ANC, but you can try,” he said.

He then gave a rendition of Yinde Lendlela, his signature tune. The title translates from Zulu as “It’s a Long Road”, and the implication is clear: his journey is not over yet.

In the hours before Tuesday’s vote, a series of coordinated protests across South Africa demanded Zuma’s removal. A petition signed by more than a million people was delivered to the deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who is seen as Zuma’s main rival.

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Zuma, 75, has never been far from scandal since he became president in 2009. Another major criticism raised during the parliamentary debate included allegations that he had allowed the state to be “captured” by the Guptas, an Indian business family that has been at the centre of a string of media exposés about graft in government and state-owned enterprises.

The no-confidence motion was brought by the Democratic Alliance (DA), the largest opposition party, in response a cabinet reshuffle in March, in which Zuma sacked the popular finance minister Pravin Gordhan. The president was playing “Russian roulette” with the economy, according to the DA leader, Mmusi Maimane.

“I never imagined that one day I would be here in this parliament fighting a new form of oppression,” Maimane said during the debate on the motion. “A corrupt system that keeps our people imprisoned in poverty. If you told me that one day our democratically elected president would end up corrupted and captured by a criminal syndicate, I would have never believed you. But here we are.”

In response, ANC MPs argued that the party remained united behind Zuma, and had set up internal processes to deal with accusations of corruption and poor governance. The no-confidence motion was dismissed repeatedly as an attempted power grab by the opposition.

“[The opposition] are using the constitution so as to collapse government, deter service delivery and sow the seeds of chaos in society so as to ultimately grab power … Shame on you!” said Doris Dlakude, the ANC’s deputy chief whip.

Although Zuma has survived this battle, he is still fighting for his political future. His term as president expires in 2019 and under the South African constitution he cannot run again.

More immediately, his term as president of the ANC expires in 2017. He is lobbying hard to install the former African Union Commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who is his ex-wife, as his successor. Opponents within the party are largely rallying behind Ramaphosa, although there are other names in the mix.

Despite the parliamentary defeat, Maimane hailed the close vote as a victory for the opposition DA. “Today’s motion of no confidence result is closer than anyone expected. The result reveals an ANC that is totally divided against itself. Jacob Zuma has survived, but he has nothing to celebrate tonight. He is mortally wounded and his party is in tatters. Tonight’s result, despite the slender victory, signals the death of the ANC,” he said in a statement.

But outside parliament, where hundreds of pro-Zuma supporters were gathered, a celebratory atmosphere prevailed. The police minister, Fikile Mbalula, told the crowd. “We were inside [parliament], they said they’re going to topple the president. But with your support, we have defeated them inside. There are those who have been asking [us to vote with] our conscience. We’ve got political conscience to keep the ANC in power forever, and that is political conscience … The African National Congress will survive!”

While the ANC, Africa’s oldest liberation movement, and the president live to fight another day, there is little doubt that both are wounded by Tuesday’s proceedings. “ANC MPs were ordered to vote to retain President Zuma. It looks like at least 25, possibly as many as 30, willingly defied that order. This looks like the first big sign of a possible rebellion against him in the ANC,” said Stephen Grootes, a political analyst with Eyewitness News.

Zuma must also contend with a supreme court of appeal hearing on 15 September, which will decide whether to reinstate 783 criminal charges against him, including fraud, corruption and racketeering.

Via The Guardian

The power of friendship should never be under-estimated as you never know when you might need a helping hand.

Such is the case of SANDF military veteran Gareth Rutherford who is serving a life sentence in Kuwait for drug trafficking – a charge he vehemently denies.

His military friends have rallied behind him in an attempt to get him freed or his sentence commuted.

Rutherford runs his blog from the Kuwait Central Prison where he explained his version of events on the fateful day he was arrested.

On his way to the airport to catch a flight to Cape Town from Kuwait on 18 September 2008 – a trip he had been looking forward to – he was asked to make a detour into the city to pick up a package for a friend.

Rutherford did not think much of it. He stopped at a tyre shop and a group of men loaded the vehicle he was travelling in with tyres. When he left the tyre shop‚ he drove straight into what he believes was a trap.

Law enforcement officials cornered him. They searched his vehicle and found drugs hidden inside the tyres.

Rutherford explains that his lawyer hardly ever pitched up for court dates and that he didn’t have an interpreter during court proceedings‚ which adversely affected him. In the end he was made to sign a confession which was written in Arabic and not translated to him.

Dawid Lotter‚ a military friend‚ is at his wits’ end in his attempts to try to save Rutherford but he refuses to give up until he is reunited with his friend.

“He would never do the thing that they are accusing him of. He is not that kind of person” said Lotter.

Lotter has set up an online petition that will hopefully get his friend’s sentence mitigated. Rutherford’s initial sentence was a death sentence but was later changed to a life sentence.

Lotter explains that the two met in 1980 during Operation Sceptic. Rutherford was a lance corporal and Lotter a captain.

During this same operation‚ Rutherford was awarded a medal for the bravery he displayed during the war.

“In operation sceptic in 1980 he was awarded the highest order for his bravery. In the battlefield while everything was burning and people dying‚ Gareth was running around in the midst of the chaos to rescue his comrades.”

But a never die attitude of a true soldier has seen Lotter refusing to give up on his friend who is stuck in the Middle East.

Lotter has called on the help of his fellow army men that served with him and Rutherford to sign the petition and spread the word on it.

Lotter aims to get 5‚000 signatures on the petition so that he can take it to the Emir in Kuwait and explain that Rutherford has been wrongly sentenced for a charge of a doubtful nature. The petition currently has 1‚799 signatures.

– TimesLIVE

This article first appeared on The Conversation

The “what if” game is popular with the media and the commentariat in South Africa. A popular example is “what if …” South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Chris Hani were still alive.

What, for example, would he say about the SACP’s tripartate alliance partner, the African National Congress? What would he say about the state of the alliance after recent calls by both partners, the SACP and union federation Cosatu for President Jacob Zuma to step down?

These questions are being asked again on the anniversary of Hani’s assassination on April 10, 1992 by two rightwing extremists.

But such use, often by the liberal media, of Hani’s name (and those of other fallen cadres of the liberation movement) is problematic. It seeks to isolate Hani from the movement that produced him, presenting him as an exception it can then appropriate.

Hani’s name is also regularly invoked by the SACP and the ANC come election time. Many campaign posters call on supporters to “Do it for Chris Hani”. Here, the summoning of Hani’s memory has become little more than empty rhetoric.

A more useful exercise may be to reflect on Hani’s life, actions and beliefs, and their significance for today.

A popular hero

In his book “A Jacana Pocket Biography: Chris Hani” historian Hugh Macmillan argues it was Hani’s physical and moral bravery, his compassion and humanity that made him a “popular hero” – the words used by French philosopher Jacques Derrida to describe Hani in his Spectres of Marx lecture.

Hani helped build a culture of internal criticism in the ANC. In 1969 he and six other commissars and commanders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, signed what became known as the “Hani memorandum”. The memorandum outlined the “frightening depth of the rot in the ANC”, accusing its leadership of careerism, corruption and persecution by the party’s security.

Hani’s memorandum was the catalyst for one of the most significant events in the history of the ANC in exile, a conference in Morogoro, Tanzania. But it was viewed as treacherous by some within the leadership, particularly those it had criticised. Hani and his comrades were expelled from the ANC and only reinstated after the Morogoro conference.

Russian scholar Vladimir Shubin has argued that it was largely thanks to the memorandum that the delegates to the conference included rank and file MK members and not just the leadership.

The Morogoro conference opened ANC membership to non-Africans. It also adopted the important “Strategy and Tactics” document. This provided – for the first time since the ANC’s banning in 1960 – a systematic assessment of the conditions of struggle and an overall vision for defeating apartheid in a time of deep political demoralisation.

The conference was a moment of self-reflection. It helped the ANC to overcome the state of crisis and demoralisation that had set in.

The ability of the leadership of both the ANC and its closest ally, the SACP, to reassess circumstances, interrogate these and themselves, and learn from past mistakes to overcome difficult moments is one of the most important lessons from their history. This tradition of internal debate has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as sowing disunity.

Disrupting notions of masculinity

A famous quote by Che Guevara states that “the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love”. Leaders like Hani were moved to act by their hearts as well as by reason. The decision to join the liberation struggle was one of reason – a conscious rejection of apartheid oppression and inequality. But it was also a choice informed by “revolutionary love” or a “love for the people” – shaped by a sense of justice and by compassion, as well as by a vision, the ability to imagine a different future.

As struggle veteran and public intellectual Raymond Suttner points out in Recovering Democracy in South Africa, what is new and alarming about many of the ANC’s

(Viewers Descretion is adviced)
Snakes and spiders ey? Unless you are one of the few people who has a strange desire to keep them as a pet, you are like the rest of us normal human beings who shit ourselves when we see one. This group of people at the Kruger National Park clearly weren’t the pet kind…

We get scared just seeing your average size mole snake or house spider. This one particular safaris group thought it was all fun and games looking at the snake in the distance, then the snake decided to slither into the cars engine. The group drove on for a little while before stopping to open the bonnet, more happy tranquil picks were taken….

Suddenly the snake decided to leave the car and ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE, people were trying to run and film at the same god damn time! It makes for great watching, check it out below.

< a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com" target="_blank">Via The South African

South Africans fed up with crime, not xenophobic – Zuma
Lizeka Tandwa and Jenna Etheridge,
Johannesburg – President Jacob Zuma says the march against immigrants in Pretoria on Friday is evidence that citizens are fed up with crime.

Speaking after the launch of Operation Phakisa, which is aimed at boosting various sectors of the South African economy, he said the march included foreign nationals, was well organised and was not xenophobic.

“We do have a big problem. This time around this has been provoked by crime.”

He said the media should be careful about labelling the protests as xenophobic. Political leaders must also be cautious with their messages.

Crime affects everyone and people are fed up, he said.

“If there are people who occupy houses and use them for crime this will make people angry. How do we fight crime?

“We must focus on drug lords and deal with them. Those are the gaps we need to close.”

Whether South African or foreign, criminals should be dealt with using the proper channels, he said.

LIVE: Pretoria ‘remains under control’ – SAPS

‘Europe doesn’t want immigrants’

A group calling itself the Mamelodi Concerned Residents organised the march to the Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria on Friday to protest the presence of immigrants in South Africa.

Police had to use stun grenades and rubber bullets to diffuse a tense stand-off between foreign nationals and South Africans in Marabastad.

A small clash between foreign shop owners and South African marchers also broke out in Christoffel Street. The police were quick to react and the fight was quelled.

Zuma urged South Africans to be understanding towards foreign nationals.

He questioned the idea that South Africans are xenophobic, saying if they were “this country wouldn’t have this many immigrants”.

He said only 5% of immigrants were refugees.

“The number of foreigners in South Africa is far more than in Europe. They don’t want immigrants.”

Zuma said he had met with his ministers to discuss what they could do to fight crime.

He would also be talking tothere police.
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A bloody shooting spree in Umlazi’s G-Section in the early hours of Saturday morning left three people dead and 12 people wounded.

It is understood that a group of gunmen ran rampant at a tavern‚ spraying automatic gunfire at patrons before making their way to a house in the same street. Inside the house on Mandla Mandlotha Street‚ three people were murdered‚ one of them a woman who had also been raped.

Police confronted the suspects at the house and shot and killed one of the gang members.

Government officials were set to visit the house later on Saturday.

TMG Digital/TimesLIVE