Lessons for resistance
“Zuma’s resignation last week, amid allegations of corruption and maladministration, had an air of inevitability about it,” writes former US Ambassador to South Africa Patrick Gaspard in the Washington Post. “But Zuma’s departure was made possible through the combined resistance and interrogation of a broad cross-section of actors who refused to reduce their aspirations for their democracy.”
Meant as a warning sign to the Americans, Gaspard writes that the strategic acumen of the South Africans can serve as a model to be followed to oppose state corruption. While Zuma did “lead in a turnaround in health care during the height of the AIDS crisis”, Gaspard details everything that he stamped out during his tenure, which includes criticism and freedom of expression. “State capture became a catchphrase across the land,” he writes.
“Fortunately, there is nothing wrong in South Africa that cannot be fixed by all that is right in South Africa. The country has a deep vein of civic engagement to tap,” Gaspard continues. “The resistance to Zuma’s web was also deeply networked and populated by civil society activists who were skilled not only at mobilization but in the use of strategic litigation; public servants and whistleblowers who were willing to risk their livelihoods for a greater purpose; journalists who toiled for months at a time on deeply researched and well-sourced exposés; robust opposition parties that rejected any concessions to the centers of corruption, that relied not just on rhetoric but also on the courts, and that endured acts of physical violence; and independent courts and judges who operated with integrity, without consideration of political positioning.”
“With all of this, it still took years for Zuma to fall. His defeat does not erase the acute challenges before South Africa, which has some of the sharpest disparities in the world and a black majority that rightly wonders about the lagging economic transformation that should have accompanied the post-apartheid political revolution. But Zuma’s demise does represent the opportunity of reform for a movement and nation,” Gaspard writes.
A stable strongman
In the run up to the upcoming Italian elections, Silvio Berlusconi has somehow become a reliable “candidate of calm”, Alberto Mingardi writes in Politico. “When Silvio Berlusconi exited the public arena to universal relief in 2011, few would have predicted the scandal-ridden politician’s return would be met with the same emotion.”
In a strange turn of events, the tide of Italian favour is turning to suit the corrupt Berlusconi, who was Prime Minister of Italy in four governments. According to Mingardi, this is because what Italy wants more than anything is stability, and in the present scenario Berlusconi represents that. Both foreign and domestic investors need stability in Italy to manage public debt, and the country’s aging population agrees.
“In this context, Berlusconi — who has claimed that Italy should comply with the fiscal compact and cut taxes, but without raising the deficit — is starting to look like the “reliable” choice. His conflicts of interest, for once, strengthen this impression.”
“It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Berlusconi’s rhetoric may have been over the top, but the policies he put in place never were. This perhaps cost Italy the radical reforms it badly needed, but in times of heated populism, it could be reassuring,” Mingardi admits.
The 81 year old Berlusconi has plenty to lose, writes Mingardi. And he is now more attuned then ever to the many Italian families and safeguarding their savings priorities.
:But at a time when Italy needs someone to calm the waters, the scales could tip in favor of safety. It is true that Berlusconi appears worryingly old and sometimes confuses his own points. But 24 years after he entered Italian politics promising a free market tsunami that never happened, his own life and story makes him the only candidate who represents the calm, still waters of the status quo,” Mingardi writes.
An anti-China stance won’t help Australia
“Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is in Washington, able to tell Americans that in 12 months he has positioned Australia as the most anti-Chinese of all America’s allies,” writes Bob Carr in the South China Morning Post. Under his leadership, and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s, Australia has been moving away from China, and Carr thinks that this could be a bid to impress America.
“Why the recent tilt? Perhaps it’s as simple as China’s rise being so sudden, especially in Southeast Asia, and the Australian security and defence establishment being traumatised. Even if this were the case, it’s not clear what the burst of adversarial commentary would achieve – as opposed to more vigorous diplomatic engagement with China about behaviour in the South China Sea, or a human rights agenda,” he writes.
“Others believe the shift in policy is a result of pressure from American security agencies, indignant that Australia allowed a Chinese company to lease the Port of Darwin and campaign contributions by two Chinese-born businessmen to Australian political parties.”
“When a headline in a serious paper casually suggests Australia wants to be recruited for war against China, maybe it’s time for the government to show that someone in Canberra is actually in charge of China policy. Many Australians would like a return to a national-interest-based policy of engagement with China. They look forward to a policy correction. Or is Turnbull happy with the impression Australia is the only US ally enlisted for a cold war?” asks Carr.