Politics Notebook: 2025 may be the Year of Trump, but perhaps not of Zuma

ALMOST everyone I’ve spoken to in the past week or so has said that 2024 was an absolutely terrible year.

I feel the same way. But actually, it’s just the fatigue at the end of the year that makes us so grumpy. Internationally, it might have been an annus horribilis, but in our parts, it wasn’t such an awful year after all.

Yesterday, I bumped into an old friend at my local shopping centre. “Gatvol,” he says. “It’s been a nightmare year.” His wife gives him a sideways glance, making me wonder if he was one of the reasons for her bad 2024.

And then she says, “2025 can only be worse.” I ask why she thinks that. She answers through clenched lips: “Trump. And Zuma.”

Three big, positive things did happen in 2024:

• We are finally rid of load-shedding. Just as we soon forgot how dismal the Covid lockdown period was, we’ve already forgotten the times of having electricity for only six or eight hours a day.
• We had another peaceful, credible election. Voters (thank you, Msholozi!) limited the “liberation movement” to 40% of the vote. And then the ANC accepted it with much grace, and its leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, declared: The people have spoken. As the outgoing American ambassador, Reuben Brigety, told me this week: “That is no longer the norm in today’s world.”
• We got a government of national unity in which ten political parties participate. This is huge. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on – most South Africans welcome the fact that the ANC is governing with the DA and the IFP, and the first signs of the GNU’s performance are positive.

The bad was that the decay of our metros and many towns continues unchecked; that the promising new police minister, Senzo Mchunu, has yet to show any difference in the fight against crime and violence; and that corruption and tender-rigging persist.

Perhaps the worst, in the longer term, is that we are now really starting to feel the impact of climate change here at the southern tip of Africa.

What did Zuma do?

Yes, the significant support Jacob Zuma’s MK Party received in the election is indeed a major concern.

But perhaps the party is not, as Zuma says, on its way to a two-thirds majority. This week, the ANC handed the MK Party a bloody nose in a by-election in its heartland, Sweetwaters, just outside Pietermaritzburg. The ANC got 51% of the votes, MK 37% and the IFP 11%.

I think voters are slowly beginning to realise that MK is largely a Zuma project to exact revenge on Ramaphosa. The leadership, which constantly changes with the moods of the old boss, does not comprise good people.

The one MK leader who will be spared firing, is Zuma’s daughter, Duduzile. She showed in an interview this week that she is not much better than daddy when it comes to accounting or mathematics.

MK’s performance in May was a 360-degree turn, she said, meaning we’re literally back to the start. She meant 180 degrees.

Dudu is the one who almost daily asks on social media: Wenzeni uZuma? What did Zuma do?

It’s a good question. He sat back and watched as the economic growth rate dropped from 5,4% in 2007 to below 1,5%; he watched as state capturers like the Guptas stole around R50 billion of state funds; he allowed several state institutions to be hollowed out and corrupted to the point where they still haven’t recovered; and he sullied South Africa’s name.

And Dudu wants us back there.

The Year of Trump

In exactly one month, Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as the new president of the USA.

For all those who have said in the past few months that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to his rhetoric but rather wait to see what he does, there have already been a few unpleasant surprises, especially with his senior appointments.

Perhaps he actually meant what he said. What has become clear from his statements and those of his allies, like Elon Musk and Kash Patel,  is that he is indeed going to take revenge on his critics in politics and the media. And it seems that the Republicans in Congress are going to support his revenge.

Trump wants to pardon about 1 500 people who were sentenced by the courts for participating in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

At the same time, he wants to imprison former Republican leader Liz Cheney for playing a leading role in the investigation into the attack. She campaigned for Kamala Harris in the recent presidential election.

The Republicans have now issued an interim report stating that Trump has no blame in the attack. The report calls for Cheney to be prosecuted because she had a young White House employee, Cassidy Hutchinson, testify before her committee.

Trump himself recently referred to the members of the committee that investigated January 6 and said: “Honestly, they should go to jail.”

Cheney did not back down a bit when she responded to the new report: “January 6th showed Donald Trump for who he really is – a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave.

“Now, Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘Interim Report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did.”

But here at the southern tip, we probably don’t need to get too worked up about what’s going on in America.

We do need to be concerned about the impact Trump will have on international geopolitics.

Ukraine is likely to be the biggest loser. Without US support, the country will be severely weakened, and Trump is likely to push for a peace treaty with Russia that will mean Ukraine will have to give up a significant portion, or all, of the territory Russia has occupied.

Trump said yesterday that Pres. Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use US long-range weapons to attack targets in Russia was “stupid” and he will revoke it.

And if Vladimir Putin gets away with his murder, China is likely to want to take military control of Taiwan. I can’t see Trump stopping that.

♦ VWB ♦

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