Stiff-necked apartheid high priests had their problems but none of them contemplated the type of weird political culture the ANC and Mr. Zuma are foisting on post-apartheid South Africa. Where is that country headed?

Monopoly capitalists and their allies in the ANC have corrupted something very precious in South Africa’s history – the proud and militant tradition of struggle for social justice. They have corrupted the dream of a free and egalitarian nation. For over two decades, the ANC has presided over entrenched corruption, which must now be resisted. But that struggle will constitute a whole new historical epoch.

Supporters of austerity are happy because South Africa’s junk rating is a good stick with which to whip President Zuma. But his immediate concern is survival, not the economy. Could the current crisis generate a long-overdue era of redistribution, racial justice and radical economic transformation? This was the promise of new Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba last Saturday, April Fool’s Day.

With the internet and all other technologies which can connect the world working class into a global fighting force to defeat global capitalism which is threatening not only human life but the entirety of our universe, there have never been better conditions for the success of the global Socialist Revolution than now.

President Zuma has always openly derided the intellectual class as “the clevers” because he knows that, at the end of day, they are not prepared or even able to carry out the donkey work of building and nurturing political constituencies and kissing naked, impoverished snotty-nosed kids just to win the vote. The “clevers” are probably too busy analysing the worth of their shares on the stock market. Perfunctory calls for the resignation of a sitting president would entail far more than this attitude.

Municipal elections in South Africa returned the poorest result for the ruling ANC party since coming to power at the end of minority white rule in 1994. But the ANC is not the only once-dynamic party in Africa that has been ruined by party leaders who get infected with a sense of entitlement after they have led their parties through successful struggles against white rule.

Last week’s local government elections in South Africa were marred by racial slurs, ethnocentric witch-hunting, mudslinging and outright physical elimination of political opponents. The country’s electoral commission remained indolent and incapable of taking bold steps to put an end to the blatant abuse of citizens’ right to choose their own leaders. Free and fair elections remain a big challenge in the rainbow nation.

President Jacob Zuma’s continued disregard for the constitution, rule of law, independence of the judiciary and authority of independent institutions is increasingly translating into the lawlessness currently dominating KwaZulu Natal, where the police, courts and state security are used to protect political interests and suppress valid public discontent; where state torture and police criminality are endemic.

On Friday, 8 April 2016, activists across Africa who call themselves “Africa’s future” published an open letter to South African President Jacob Zuma. They believe he no longer has moral authority and are calling for him to resign.