Carlos Alberto Parreira former and now restored Bafana Bafana coach carries the weight of a nation on his shoulders. South Africa wants to distinguish itself as a World Cup host, and the legions of rabid fans of the national football team hope that Bafana Bafana will perform in such a way as to augment that distinction. Parreira took over from his seemingly hapless fellow Brazilian Joel Santana recently, but the disarray of the side he once coached leaves Parreira with a daunting task.

As recently as April and the eve of the South African elections, prominent and controversial former-ANC clergyman-turned Congress of the People-leader Alan Boesak was trying to persuade Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille to abandon her ultimately non-viable party and to join forces with COPE. Zille had no interest of course and instead leads the DA as the official opposition party, a status that COPE sees as a logical next step, but for which it may be ill prepared. Just six months after recahing out to Zille, Boesak has left COPE, allegedly because the party’s “structures are in disarray,” and before even most party officials probably realized Boesak was gone, the ANC was there to meet him with open arms. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, meanwhile, hopes that Boesak finds his true calling in “God’s Party” and rejoins the active clergy. It remains to be seen whether the ANC or God will win the bidding for Boesak’s presence, but at least from the perspective of both appearances and symbolism, COPE emerges as the big loser in the Boesak sweepstakes.

By now we are all well aware of China’s “Scramble for Africa.” But did you know that Brazil is also heavily involved with trade and investment across Africa?

Many observers fear that the new wave of involvement in Africa will result in another stage of neocolonialism or clientelism. But there also exists the possibility that African states and consumers will be able to benefit from the plenitude of interests jockeying for position in Africa. The problem with colonialism, of course, is that Africans had no say in the process or in its manifestation. Colonialism was all about power. Force, coercion, manipulation, and fear — these were the hallmarks of the colonial era. Things improved, but only slightly during the Cold War, when a binary world meant that while Africans had options, those options were limited, and while the west has too often overlooked the savviness and self-interested behavior of Africans in weighing the merits of the so-called First and Second Worlds, the reality on the ground was that neither global superpower, and certainly not the United States and its allies, much cared about the fate of Africans so long as African leaders went along with the program. The result? Mobutu Sese Seku and his ilk, friends to American leaders and enemies of their own people.

So yes, history tells us that there is much to fear in a new era of outsiders coming to Africa with seductive promises. And yet absent a binary world and the various forces of coercion that characterized the past, maybe, just maybe, the presence of a country such as Brazil alongside that of the United States and China and the European Union, will force the outsiders to negotiate based on what’s best for them, sure, but also to take into account African needs.

South Africa has announced that it will miss a self-imposed deadline of 2014 to redistribute a third of the country’s land from white to black farmers. There is much to lament in this decision. Land reform is necessary, many of the black masses have not seen the benefits of the New South Africa that have been enjoyed by a slowly growing few, and this news provides grist for the mill of the ANC’s critics from the left.

And yet if the nightmare of land reform in Zimbabwe has taught us anything it is that it is better to do land reform right than to do it fast. Even as we lament the delay — 2014, after all, will mark two decades since Nelson Mandela’s election symbolized a new dawn in the country’s history — we should celebrate the way in which South African officials have not used land reform as a weapon. Consider Robert Mugabe: In the years prior to 2000 Mugabe and his ZANU-PF used the threat of land reform as a Damocles sword hanging over the head of the country’s whites without at the same time developing a coherent, structured, equitable plan for redistribution. Thus when the dam broke in 2000 and Mugabe let land “reform” go forward, chaos and violence reigned. Redistribution became a form of delayed retribution against white farmers. Those who took the land over often had no clue how to utilize it and what was once the breadbasket of Africa became nearly useless agriculturally. These disastrous policies are almost certainly the single biggest cause of the country’s economic calamity over the last decade.

A bad land reform policy, and especially one that is so brazenly used as a political weapon, is worse than no reform at all. If delay in South Africa means that there will be an equitable, coherent plan, perhaps we can live with delay. At the same time, to steal and paraphrase a quotation from the American Civil Rights Movement, land reform delayed is land reform denied. The purpose of this delay needs to be to ensure that when redistribution does happen, South Africa has all of the resources to ensure its success. The lesson of Zimbabwe looms large. Let’s hope that the South African government is drawing the right lessons from Zimbabwe’s shame.

Presumably bringing to an end one of the more bizarre chains of events in recent African history (and yes, I am well aware of just how brazen that assertion is) President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equitorial Guinea has pardoned the conspirators in the 2004 coup plot in his country. Simon Mann, a shady British (via South Africa, natch) mercenary was the most visible figure and led the bizarre plot that also implicated Mark Thatcher, the son of the former British Prime Minister, who was convicted of separate (and considerably lesser) charges in South Africa. Allegations that the United States and Great Britain stood behind the coup machinations were never substantiated and probably amounted to little, though they add another layer of absurdity to the proceedings.

(I already have too many category tags at this blog, but I think I need to add a “General Weirdness” category.)

Let’s begin the new week with a roundup of stories from across Africa, with commentary as apropos:

Mozambique’s voters went to the polls last week and it appears that, as with every national election since independence in 1975, they have returned FRELIMO to power. One voter seems to have captured the consensus opinion: “I voted for Frelimo. Why? That’s what I’m used to.”

Tunisians went to the polls recently as well. They too returned their current rulers, though most observers believe that the overwhelming victory of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s and of his ruling party in parliament, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), was not free of coercion.

The deadly violence aimed at protesters in Guinea last month? Apparently it was premeditated.

Is Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan the new Trevor Manuel? By this, I mean, is Gordhan going to overcome ideology and politics to become a respected leader in the ANC hierarchy? (Trevor Manuel, of course, is in a stronger position than ever, so technically, he is the new Trevor Manuel, but still.) Gordhan is receiving rave reviews for the budget he put forward last week. Even the cranky opposition (from left and right) seems impressed.

In looking at tourism in South Africa, David Smith is convinced that Johannesburg’s biggest selling point is the Apartheid past. Over the years I have come to really love Joburg, but Cape Town it is not, especially on first blush. Still, if people go for the grim history, maybe they will stay and explore before moving on to the Western Cape, Durban, Kruger, or wherever else they intended to go after arriving at OR Tambo Airport. As a historian, I’ll just say that there are worse things than to use history as a drawing card.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has declared an indefinite ceasefire. However tenuous, the ceasefire represents good news in a conflict that many have seen as being virtually intractable.

Should the United States consider intervention in Somalia? The Washington Post’s editors pose that question. Their answer, basically: Maybe. Mine: Tread lightly.

Not news: The political situation in Zimbabwe continues to be unstable. News: It might be getting worse, as ZANU-PF violence against supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has escalated in recent days.

Do you want to ask South African President Jacob Zuma a question? Of course you do! Here is your opportunity.

Finally: It’s a sporting bonanza! 2010 and the World Cup is just around the corner. The Proteas are preparing to host England (and to restore some pride after their less-than-robust performance as the host team in the recent Champions Trophy tournament). The Springboks are gearing up for a European tour that will take them to France, Italy, and Ireland and will hopefully provide an exclamation point to an epochal 2009 season.

The talks toward creating the unity government in Zimbabwe have stalled again. And the hardliners in Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party appear to be the most interested in ensuring that no long-term agreement is reached, although Mugabe is stirring the pot by hinting that he might replace ministers from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), including Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who have been boycotting recent proceedings. The only real news here would be if any of this came as a surprise to anyone.

South Africa’s Congress of the People (COPE) appears to be setting itself up as a watchdog for all sorts of political malfeasance and thus to be positioning itself as the legitimate opposition party to the African National Congress (ANC). In recent days COPE has both defended the ANC’s Kader Asmal against supposed hate speech from deputy police minister Fikile Mbalula and the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) and plans to lodge a complaint against police Minister Nathi Mthethwa over the minister’s stay at two luxury hotels on the public account. If these actions represent a systematic attempt to set the party up as a true advocate for “the people” (scare quotation marks included because, let’s face it - what party does not claim to represent the people?) I’d say it is a smart leap forward for a political party with considerable promise but much distance to travel.

Is the African National Congress’ internal reckoning coming? I have for years argued that the ANC’s tripartite coalition of the ANC itself, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and the South African Communist Party (SACP) is, in the long run, untenable. The ANC is a party of the left and always, to be sure, but it is not far enough to the left for COSATU and the SACP. And while those two constituent parts have always seen themselves as coequals, the reality is that within the ANC, they do not hold the cards of power. The ANC, for right or for wrong (and I think generally though not perfectly for right) has chosen not to forsake liberal market economics in favor of far-left redistributionist policies. It certainly has not embraced a command economy or any form of African Socialism, even rhetorically.

And so it seems almost certain that at some point COSATU and SACP will break away and form their own party. The emergence of the Congress of the People (COPE) as a potential (but not yet actualized, as we saw in the recent elections) opposition force might make matters more complicated, but since COPE does not appear to be pushing leftward (and might be going the other way), the coast is still clear for a party from the left to emerge from a fractured ANC coalition.

Such a schism would not be without its problems, of course. COSATU and the SACP do not necessarily want to break away. They would much rather change the ANC than leave it, especially as leaving would require giving up on the access of power. A new COSATU-SACP party might move the center of gravity in South African politics to the left, but that shift would not take place overnight, such a party would never become the sort of monolith that that ANC has been, and many prominent folks might find themselves in the political wilderness. Nor would the ANC want to see such a defection from within the ranks of the tripartite alliance. Why become a party with 55%, 50% or 45% of the vote by breaking up when you can maintain 60+% simply by figuring out how left and center can live together?

Because breaking up may be hard to do, but the alternative is sometimes impossible, especially in the long run. COSATU and SACP have been at the throat of the ANC for some time, and this civil war shows little sign of cooling.  The power structure of the ANC may want to work things out, or at least pay lip service to doing so, but as the coming months progress, the ANC might discover that it is best simply to have as amicable divorce as is possible.  For as much as the left is growing sick of the ANC center, the ANC center (which by any political definition or schema is center-left, and quite comfortably left at that) is getting pretty sick of the left too. The difference is that the ANC holds the strongest cards now and for the foreseeable future.

Today’s presentation of the South African budget will go a long way in determining whether and for how long the various segments of the ANC alliance will be able to paper over their differences. COPE and the Democratic Alliance are both afraid that the ANC are going to cave in to the leftists, with COPE skillfully positioning itself as a de facto official opposition party, a title that the DA currently holds, though I doubt highly that there will be another national election after which the DA continues on as the second-largest party in government.

Increasingly the breakup of the ANC coalition may become a matter of when, not if. While perhaps bad for the ANC’’s stranglehold on unquestioned power, and while such a dissolution will almost certainly be heartbreaking for those with a sense of history, it may well be good for South Africa as a whole. After all, one couple’s breakup almost always represents someone else’s opportunity, and not all relationships are meant to endure.

My friend Mark, who has a PhD in history and an emphasis on water issues, and whose name I am not going to release for what I hope are obvious reasons, has this report on the cholera situation there:

Although cholera which ravaged Zimbabwe in 2008/9 has been brought under control especially after the intervention of the donor community - the International Federation of the Red Cross/IFRC; UN agencies such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), WHO and UNICEF as well as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) etc - the potential for another outbreak continues to exist. Service delivery in the water sector is still nightmarish. The potential for persistent outbreaks has often been predicted by UNICEF because water supply and sanitary conditions have not significantly changed since last year. Harare and Chitungwiza residents for example have, in the absence of water, resorted to the bush system and are drawing water from unprotected sources and as usual cholera outbreaks are likely to escalate with the onset of the rains.

The situation is already pointing to another major outbreak. Apparently, a senior government official has admitted the death of five people and the infection of 30 more people in the most recent outbreak recorded in October 2009 mainly in the Mashonaland West and Midlands provinces of Zimbabwe. The current wave of cholera started in September in Chipinge (Manicaland province). However, the severity of the water-borne disease could be limited this time around due to the fact that UNICEF is still very much on the ground although WHO and the Red Cross seem to have retracted. The Global Political Agreement (GPA)-brokered Government of National Unity’s (GNU) financial capacity and its efforts in luring medical professionals back into the hospitals which last year (2008) resembled deserted places could act as a major factor in limiting the impact of cholera now. It is disconcerting to note though that the imminent signs of disintegration of the GNU will spell disaster for the nation if another epidemic of last year’s proportions were to recur.

I trust this friend absolutely and without qualification.