Two+centres+of+power+clash,+Jeremy+Gordin,+Sunday+Independent



=Two centres of power clash=


 * Jeremy Gordin, Sunday Independent, 23 December 2007**

Jacob Zuma, the new president of the ANC, said this week that one of the many issues he will focus on in the near future is "inflation targeting" - a policy that is the central pillar of President Thabo Mbeki's economic policy.

"Clearly," said Zuma, "our main method of inflation targeting, which is hiking the interest rate, has resulted in complaints from both the top end of the financial spectrum as well as the bottom end … So it stands to reason that there's some kind of 'problem' there. And, though I am not going to pretend that I have delved into the issue properly, it is something that I am going to get to."

Inflation targeting, adopted in South Africa in February 2000 as the country's monetary policy framework, is an economic policy in which a central bank estimates, and makes public, a "target" inflation rate then tries to steer actual inflation towards the target - mainly, at least in South Africa, by using interest rate changes.

Zuma's union backers have been dead against the policy.

There have been eight interest rate hikes since June 2006, amounting to an increase of 400 basis points, and bringing the interest rate to 14,5 percent. This has resulted in consumers having to pay more on their bond repayments, hire purchase instalments and credit cards.

During a Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and South African Communist Party press conference at the ANC's 52nd conference in Polokwane, Jeremy Cronin, the deputy general secretary of the communist party, who was voted into the fifth place on the new ANC national executive committee (NEC), said: "We don't think that pushing up interest rates is the only way to manage an economy … what we look forward to with Zuma in the presidency is that at least we'll be able to debate these properly."

Zuma was interviewed at midnight on Wednesday in Polokwane, where he was preparing with an aide his closing speech for the conference.

In the speech, delivered the next afternoon, Zuma called for ANC unity, calmed the fears of foreign and local investors, called for everyone to join the fight against crime and HIV/Aids, and pledged that the ANC and he would work with President Thabo Mbeki during the transition period to the next national elections in 2009.

Zuma suggested that, as street committees had been such a powerful tool in the struggle against the apartheid regime, they might be an equally potent weapon against crime. Yesterday, speaking telephonically to The Sunday Independent from a breakfast meeting in Durban, Zuma said: "Yes, I think the street committee idea is not unfeasible at all. I know that there may not be street committees in, say, Parkview, Johannesburg, but there, as in other places, there is probably some form of community policing.

"But it is especially where there is no community policing that people are the worst victims of crime and I just think that if street committees were so powerful against a hostile police force, as in the days of apartheid, they could be even more powerful in aiding a police force.

"And I think that ANC branches have got to get involved in the street committees in the fight against crime. If they do, we could start winning that war."

The conversation with Zuma was momentarily interrupted by a call from Zimbabwe. "That was Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Zimbabwean opposition, on the phone," said Zuma.

"Basically, he was saying that he hoped I could play a role in helping in the Zimbabwe situation - which he says is desperate."

At his Polokwane press conference Zuma told the media that he was not opposed to South Africa's so-called quiet diplomacy in Zimbabwe because there did not seem to be any other that worked and, even though it was not highly effective it was more so than the alternatives.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the Polokwane conference, there were some questions being asked by Zuma supporters about why Zuma had apparently quashed a potential conference resolution condemning the national prosecuting authority (NPA) and calling on the relevant "oversight authorities to call the NPA to account".

The resolution, drafted by a number of "party structures" and sent to Baleka Mbete, the conference chairman, for proposal and seconding, strongly condemned "the improper conduct" of the NPA for, among other things, persistently announcing publicly that it was ready to charge Zuma and for making such an announcement on the closing day of the conference.

Yesterday, Zuma distanced himself from the quashing of the resolution, saying that "he had not really been aware of it".

But one of his friends said that, as the conference delegates had, in any case, voted to disband the Scorpions in June 2008, he guessed that Zuma did not want to have the ruling party issue a condemnatory resolution at its conference. Another said: "I suppose Zuma did not want to be seen to be mobilising the conference against the NPA at this juncture. As he said, this is not the time for triumphalism."

Speaking yesterday from Durban, in his personal capacity, Zuma did not mince his words: "Very, very strange that the NPA made a statement that they were going to prosecute me during the conference. You have to be suspicious of such behaviour. It's just like the days of Bulelani [Ngcuka, the former national director of public prosecutions] - trying to mobilise the media against me."

· Angela Quintal reports: At a press conference on Friday, President Thabo Mbeki said Zuma would not automatically become the party's candidate to succeed him as head of state in 2009.

"I would not say that 13 years in government establishes a tradition. There is nothing automatic about being president of the ANC - you do not necessarily become the [presidential] candidate." However, according to the resolutions in Independent Newspapers' possession that were adopted at the Polokwane conference, "the ANC president shall be the candidate of the movement for president".

It also said there was general agreement that the ANC president should serve no more than two terms of office.


 * From: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4183130**

1031 words