With a deputy linked to corruption, S. African president under pressure

Baltimore Sun ^ | June 10, 2005 | Scott Calvert, Sun Foreign Staff

[Cincinatus' Wife]

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - With a long-simmering political corruption scandal at a boil, all eyes are on President Thabo Mbeki as he weighs how to respond to a court ruling that some experts say is an important test of South Africa's 11-year-old democracy.

Mbeki is under pressure to act after a judge asserted that Deputy President Jacob Zuma had a "generally corrupt relationship" with a Durban businessman recently convicted of graft.

The question is: Will Mbeki - who appointed Zuma - fire him to demonstrate South Africa's intolerance for impropriety and its commitment to the type of good governance that lures foreign aid and investment?

Or will he bow to internal political demands and spare his deputy on the basis that business mogul Schabir Shaik - not Zuma - was the one on trial?

Mbeki's dilemma goes beyond political intrigue. It touches on fears that South Africa - rated the second-cleanest African country, after Botswana, by the international government watchdog Transparency International - could slide into a culture of corruption. And it underscores the notion that Mbeki's ruling African National Congress, once a hallowed liberation movement, is becoming more and more an ordinary political party.

Mbeki's decision is expected any day and could determine who will follow him in four years as the country's third president since the end of apartheid in 1994. Zuma, long seen as a top contender, has shown no willingness to quit, and his allies are marching in the streets to support him.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Ping

[rodguy911]

Corruption in Africa, corrupt dictators, naaaahhhh couldn't happen.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Hollywood certainly is silent.

What a bunch of morons.

[rodguy911]

It's a laudable thing to want to help poor countries but invariably what happens is the poor become poorer(we look real good however in the MSM) and the dictators become richer. So in essence doo-gooders have a reverse effect on these societies which really must solve their own problems. What is needed is a little more capitalism and less Socialism and fewer horrific dictators.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

They need lot more democratic rule of law and a lot fewer communist sympathizers..

[ReadyNow]

South Africa need Jesse Jackson.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

They don't want him.

He cuts into their action.

[rodguy911]

That would solve a lot of problems.