William Gumede

The new muscular police strategy of shoot-to-kill to stop runaway crime is not the solution.

The fierce battle to oust former President Thabo Mbeki and his allies at the ANC’s seminal December 2007 national conference in Polokwane, brought together into an alliance, two broad but diametrically opposed groups. Both groups wanted Mbeki out.

Western countries are now bailing out commercial banks and strategic industries with public money. They are once again lifting tariff barriers for products from African and developing countries. Yet, they discourage African countries from doing the same.

The after-effects of the global financial crisis may lead to the re-colonisation of some African countries, with some likely to go bankrupt and others stripped of their assets by Western and Eastern powers.

It is soon going to be Women’s Day, which will be accompanied by the usual turning up of the volume in public rhetoric from our leaders proclaiming their undying commitment to advancing the interests of women.

The ‘third force’ behind the community protests against poor service delivery, mismanagement and indifferent local authorities that is sweeping the country is poverty.

Given the pervasive corruption, mismanagement and lack of service delivery in most South African provinces, many have, not surprisingly, called for this sphere of government to be scrapped.

Given the extreme poverty of the majority of ordinary South Africans, it is an affront that political leaders elected after promising to change the lives of the poor live in extraordinary opulence on public money.

To ease the wave of job losses, factory and mine closures as a result of the global financial crisis, the question should not be whether the South African government should bail out or nationalise certain struggling companies, it should be: Which ones?

Job losses are increasing, food and fuel prices soaring and house repossessions increasing – yet, depressingly, one does not get a sense that the government is urgently doing anything to avert disaster.