Anyone watch the State of the Nation, version 2, on Wednesday? The President is a controversial man, a character who has been at the centre of much drama. He sings a mean struggle song, is an incredibly agile dancer for his generation and knows how to whip up a crowd.
Anyone watch the State of the Nation, version 2, on Wednesday? The President is a controversial man, a character who has been at the centre of much drama. He sings a mean struggle song, is an incredibly agile dancer for his generation and knows how to whip up a crowd.
Wednesday was his chance to impress the world with all the amazing things the ANC is going to do after their resounding election victory.
So why was he so awfully boring?
The Daily Maverick's Sisonke Msimang nailed it. "The real critique of last night's SONA is not that it was boring, it is that the speech was boring on purpose."
Msimang says Zuma intended "to depoliticise meaningful things". He uses "technical language" despite the fact that it alienates people. He wants to come across as "sophisticated and ‘rational’". And he wants "to blunt the edges of increasingly politicised demands from the public".
Zuma's political hypnotism may have worked in Parliament and on TV for a few hours, but it could not change the reality of people's lives.
It hasn't changed the water problems, the sewage problems, the education problems, the unemployment, the inequality.
In an unprecedented high court class action, 90 Eastern Cape schools are attempting to force the provincial education depart to fill thousands of vacant posts and to repay salaries paid by the schools.
In another major court case, five large corporations based in Port Elizabeth challenged the Nelson Mandela Bay council's adoption of the budget determining rates, tariffs and surcharges for the 2011/12 financial year.
The Judge ruled that the municipality had failed to comply with its statutory and constitutional obligations. The judge ordered that NMBMM must comply with the MFMA in future and were ordered to pay costs.
We've also seen local businessman Rob Beer win a legal action in which the high court ordered Makana Municipality to adjudicate on an application related to development within seven days. The order was served on Monday 9 June.
These three legal actions all involve alliances between mainstream institutions not known for their political radicalism, using the law to force government to do what it should be doing.
Hopefully the pressure of such legal actions, combined with more public forms of protests, will be effective in waking up the President's fellow politicians.
