A Barrage of Links and selective commentary as I try to get back to a regular routine after all of the travel of late:

South African president Jacob Zuma is considering granting his economic development ministry greater powers but first needs to determine whether doing so would be constitutional. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) hopes that Zuma will push economic policy leftward. But the ANC has tended to steer a centrist course on economic matters, much to the chagrin of ANC alliance partners COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP). If Zuma veers leftward it may still not satisfy COSATU and the SACP and refusing to yield to their entreaties will further alienate the ANC’s leftist colleagues. It would be a grand irony if the ascension of Zuma, who was supposed to represent the ANC’s left flank far better than Thabo Mbeki did, proved to be the final stage in what I have long seen as the inevitable fracturing the Tripartite alliance. For years COSATU and the SACP have sacrificed ideology (and dogma) for the access to power. I continue to believe that it is a matter of when, rather than if, they choose to go their own way.

At The New Republic Ruth Franklin reviews the marvelous Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new collection of stories, The Thing Around Your Neck. But the review is really an essay about Adichie’s entire oeuvre in which Franklin argues that Adichie uses Chinua Achebe as a model. Adichie could certainly do worse.

Somalia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Marine Resources Abdurahman Haji Aden Alias Ibbi has announced a new plan to defend Mogadishu’s coast from pirates and other predators. According to the arrangement, new sailors trained for the Transitional Federal Government will be responsible for the city’s northern coast while peacekeepers of the African Mission in Somalia, Amisom, will guard the southern coast of Mogadishu. Of course in Somalia all of the best plans in the world cannot compensate for an inability to execute them, and observers would be forgiven for questioning whether the government will be able to follow through on this strategy.

Earlier today Ugandan police arrested Idelphonse Niziyimana, who has been accused of being a central figure in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. Niziyamana has been under indictment since 2000 and had illegally crossed into Uganda, where he was staying in a resort hotel in Kampala.

It is time to start trying to pick up the pieces in Guinea after Conakry descended into chaos last week. On September 28, the government’s security forces opened fire on demonstrators at the capital city’s main stadium to protest against the prospect of junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara becoming a candidate for the country’s presidential election in January. With the backing of the European Union, Blaise Compaore, the president of Burkina Faso, is serving as a mediator for the crisis, which led to the deaths of 150 or more according to the most reliable estimates. Of course Camara denies any responsibility for last week’s violence and he continues to plan to run for office, so it seems to me that stalemate has set in, except that Camara has more guns than the opposition.

Kenya and Uganda have come to an agreement to build a railroad between Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast and Kampala on the shores of Lake Victoria. In the words of Ugandan Transport Minister John Nasasira, “There has been a tendency to rely on the donor community when such projects are involved but this is fear that we as a region need to overcome for the benefit of regional economies. We cannot continue relying on the current outdated railway line and locomotives that move at 50 kilometres per hour.”

South African writer and noted recluse JM Coetzee is not going to break character for this year’s Booker Awards ceremony. He will not be attending this year’s award presentation despite the fact that he could win an unprecedented third Booker Prize for his latest book, Summertime. Coetzee, who lives in Australia, is not the favorite to win (Hilary Mantel is the leader according to the experts) though this plays absolutely no role in the South African expat’s absence.

Finally, happy 4000th post to Texas in Africa! May there be 4000 more, and another 4000 after that.

The new semester has begun and I have less than an hour before the first meeting of my graduate seminar in Modern African History. I have time to roll off a few stories that warrant some discussion:

Former Zambian President Frederick Chiluba has been acquitted of using his country’s treasury like his own personal bank account. Most observers see the decision as a step back for those pushing for strong anti-corruption safeguards across the continent.

In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine Deborah Solomon had an interview with Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. I have to admit, I am always befuddled when people argue that the world would be a more peaceful place if women were in charge. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir say “hello!”

Sao Tome: Mmmmmmm . . . . chocolate!

A number of African Union heads of state met at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa on Monday to address global climate change. They came up with the frankly not unreasonable proposal to have the affluent western nations help fund their transition to greener energies to the tune of some $67 billion annually. I would, however, argue that tactically it might not be the best approach to label the hoped-for funds as “damages.”

Kenya has kicked off its new census process amidst controversy over the appropriateness of asking for ethnic labels. One does have to question the utility of such labels given recent Kenyan history.

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has embraced a public report issued by scientists who have questioned - sometimes scathingly - several aspects of the country’s public health policies. Although it may be too early to be making such assessments, this seems like another clear break between Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki, whose administration rarely dealt with criticism well.

And for those of you who are interested, here is the reading list for my Modern Africa graduate seminar:

Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore, Africa Since 1800

Curtis Keim, Mistaking Africa

Tim Jeal, Stanley

M.E. Chamberlain, The Scramble For Africa

Giles Foden, Mimi and Toutou’s Big Adventure

David Birmingham, The Decolonization of Africa

Paul Nugent, Africa Since Independence

Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full

It appears that tensions are already brewing between the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and President Jacob Zuma. Who could have seen this coming? Other than me, and plenty of others, I mean. (Pardon the self indulgence.)

COSATU feels as if it catapulted Jacob Zuma to the presidency, not only by its support in the recent elections, but perhaps more importantly, by supporting Zuma in the Zuma-Thabo Mbeki split. As a consequence, COSATU, which has always felt it deserved a greater voice in the political process, is demanding its pound of flesh. At the same time, however, Jacob Zuma might be discovering some of the political and macroeconomic realities that Mbeki saw. Governing the country is a lot harder than appeasing even the largest and most powerful of interest groups, and COSATU is an interest group, even if it is not only an interest group.

Expect COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP) to grow disenchanted with Zuma’s leadership of their tripartite alliance partner  African National Congress just as it grew disenchanted with Mbeki’s leadership, and just as it grew disenchanted (but would never publicly admit it) with Nelson Mandela’s leadership, at least in the economic realm. And thus I believe that my ongoing prediction will come to pass: The ANC will someday face its most serious challenge from the left, in the form of a breakaway COSATU-SACP alliance, and not the right. recent transformations in the country’s politics could well lead to a re-merging of the ANC and the Congress of the People (COPE) if the leftist elements do eventually pursue their own course.

Jacob Zuma wanted the presidency. Now he has it. he might just find that Governing is a lot harder than opposing. No one in politics is more popular among his or her supporters than the opponent of an unpopular president right before he steps into office. As a result, though, while such a leader has incredible opportunities to lead, they also have a long way they can fall if they prove to disappoint those who projected their own hopes and dreams on the candidate irrespective of whether or not those hopes and dreams reflected those of the insurgent.

I recently returned from a few days in Oxford, and as a consequence some stories have piled up that I otherwise might have given greater attention to but that at least warrant links:

The Nigerian government is pretty serious about cracking down on the militants in the Niger Delta. Expect a response. This is not to say that the government should not work hard to address the militant opposition. But its methods will inevitably draw a response from folks for whom subtlety is not exactly a forte.

Texas in Africa believes that President Barack Obama missed out on an opportunity by scheduling his first sub-Saharan African trip to Ghana rather than to a place like Kenya, with which he not only has some connections, but that also would reveal a willingness to step into actual trouble spots that American leaders usually avoid. My view is that a tirp like this requires myriad considerations, and I will not get too exercised about Ghana versus Kenya or South Africa or the DRC. I am most concerned with him formulating an Africa policy that addresses the most important issues. Of course I hope he uses Africa as more than a backdrop for photo-ops. And I trust that he will, largely because I am an optimist rather than because American history has given me any real evidence for believing this.

At Politicsweb Stanley Uys and Paul Trewhela analyze South African President Jacob Zuma’s new cabinet. They conclude that Zuma’s economic policies are about to turn leftward, toward policies more conciliatory to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and South African Communist Party (SACP) than those of his successor Thabo Mbeki. What such a shift means is anybody’s guess.

Finally, IRIN sees a “general defrosting” of relations between Zimbabwe’s new unity government and various western states, actors, aid agencies, and the like. The metaphor IRIN uses is one comparing the current phase to a refrigerator rather than a freezer, however, so the temperatures are still pretty cold.

Jacob Zuma has named his new cabinet, giving some insight into what sort of President Zuma might make, which comes as a welcome diversion from the cult of personality aspects that tend to predominate South African politics. Naturally, finger pointing seems to rule the day.

Critics are wary of Zuma’s “New Blood” cabinet, which includes only two holdover members from the Mandela years. Of course Mandela left office a decade ago, and so such turnover should not be especially surprising, especially given that in the interregnum the party was deeply divided by the Zuma-Mbeki factionalism. If there is a rejection of the past it comes in the form of showing Mbeki appointees the door and ought not to be seen as a rejection of Madiba. And it is far from clear that South Africans speak in a unified voice in support of the performance of Thabo Mbeki’s cabinet, and to the contrary, there is substantial enough evidence that many feel quite the opposite.

In any case, choosing a cabinet is one of the spoils of victory. And Zuma’s critics can say what they will, but he and the ANC upon which he has so clearly put his stamp clearly won the recent elections. The further irony in all of the criticism of Zuma rejecting the country’s recent past is that most experts identify the cabinet as representing considerable continuity with recent ANC policy. One surprise (and exception to the theme of continuity) does come in the form of the establishment of a Department of Economic Development. The DED will be headed by trade unionist Ebrahim Patel, and is likely to usurp some of the responsibilities of the finance minister and the Department of the Treasury and indicates a leftward policy shift in economic policy.

But the ire is not exclusively aimed at the ANC. Partisans of the, let’s face it, otherwise irrelevant Freedom Front Plus (FF+) are outraged that their Pieter Mulder has accepted a deputy minister post in the restructured Department of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. In what qualifies as a nice little irony, the FF+ equivalent of the ANC Youth League is most outraged at Mulder’s “unilateral decision.”

Meanwhile Democratic Alliance head Helen Zille, meanwhile, is rediscovering that leadership carries with it a certain level of accountability. Zille is facing criticism that her Western Cape cabinet is too white and too male. Zille responds with the seemingly paradoxical assertion that her hands were completely tied and she had no choice in her candidates, which seems dubious, while at the same time rejecting “race and gender bean-counting,” indicating that perhaps she does have more of a choice than she first allowed. Apparently affirmative action is alive and well in precisely those precincts that ordinarily reject affirmative action. Irony, thy name is Democratic Alliance! That said, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and in the Western Cape, the DA won and thus the party’s leaders get to determine the composition of the provincial cabinet, however unrepresentative it is of the province’s demographics and however nakedly it reveals the hypocrisy of much of the white political center.

And as with most political arguments, those related to the composition of the cabinet(s) are temporal. The proof will be in the governing. And for that, only time will give us some sense of whether Zuma’s (or for that matter Zille’s) is a good cabinet, responsive to the needs of South Africans and the demands of these difficult times.

Greetings from the University of Keele in the North Midlands of England. I will be spending the next month here as a visiting fellow at the David Bruce Cetre for American Studies. I am still very much settling in. It is, however, always nice to be back in the UK. I find that the UK is a good deal more atuned to African affairs than the United States is. This largely has to do with Britain’s involvement in the colonial era, to be sure, but as a general rule, British media, for example has far better coverage of African affairs than does its American counterpart.

Two quick links with only brief commentary:

South Africa’s Jacob Zuma seems set to take a harder stand on Zimbabwe and especially Robert Mugabe than did Thabo Mbeki. What this means is uncertain, of course, especially given the unity government in Zimbabwe and prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s quite clear exhortations to the rest of the world to slacken its tough stances on Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, observers worry that Sudan’s elections, scheduled for next year, are unlikely to be free, fair, or peaceful. This should come as a shock to absolutely no one, including even Khartoum’s apologists.

Joseph Lelyveld is a respected ournalist, editor at The New York Times, and that paper’s  one-time southern Africa correspondent based in South Africa. Nonetheless, I’m not sure I entirely embrace the argument expressed in the title of his (otherwise fine) New York Review of Books essay on Mark Gevisser’s A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream, “How Mbeki Failed.”  I think the story of Mbeki’s presidency is a lot more complex than the simple dualism of  “Success” or “failure” and that it simplifies and reduces history to turn politics into a win-loss percentage.

Mbeki had obvious areas of failure: He lost the personal battle between himself and Jacob Zuma (the two will forever be inextricably intertwined); his AIDS policy was irredeemable; he did not do enough to address poverty; many believe that his administration embodied Machiavellian power-scheming; his Zimbabwe policy frustrated many; he never seemed to grasp the enormity of crime, either on the ground or as it manifested itself psychologically. These are definite shortcomings and in soem cases failings. 

But every politician has failings. At the same time, South Africa experienced consistent, uninterrupted economic growth that is the envy not only of Africa but of most of the world. The country maintained its status as the region’s superpower without overplaying that hand. Under Mbeki the country continued to move from the Apartheid-era, a transition that went so smoothly that it is easy to forget just how seemingly impossible that transition was, and just how onerous and oppressive the Apartheid regime was. And from the perspective of pure politics, Mbeki consolidated the power of the ANC - this last accomplishment might be a dual-edged sword in the eyes of many, but as a political accomplishment, Mbeki, who was no Nelson Mandela (which might itself be a huge part of Mbeki’s perception issue) nonetheless brought the ANC to heights Mandela never took the party.

In short, Mbeki’s presidency was a mixed-bag. It was complex and contentious. It had its successes amidst its clear failings. Mbeki was human. And his administration represented the difficulties of his place and time. I do not come to defend Mbeki, but rather to make clear that it does a disservice to history and political analysis to reduce his administration, or any, to a tally sheet.

This Sunday’s New York Times Book Review features focuses on two books on Africa. The Times’ East African correspondent Jeffrey Gettelman reviews the respected Africanist Gerard Prunier’s book Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. And  the Times’ former South Africa correspondent Suzanne Daley takes a look at Mark Givisser’s A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream, a fairly significant abridgement (the original weighed in at more than 900 pages) and update of his  2007 book Thabo Mbeki: A Dream Deferred, which was published in South Africa. Both books receive qualified thumbs up.

Not so generously received is Dambiso Moyo’s book Dead Aid, which Michael Gerson hammers in The Washington Post.  Moyo has become a darling in conservative circles for her “aid is bad” argument, which Gerson rightly points out as being simplistic and just plain wrong, or as he writes, “the book is something of a marvel: Seldom have so many sound economic arguments been employed to justify such disastrously wrongheaded conclusions.” We may never settle the question of what aid works best, but an argument that asserts that no aid works is bound not to get us anywhere, except perhaps invitations to swank conservative cocktail parties.

In some ways the run-up to the South African election has all of the characteristics of an internecine squabble turned public. The Congress of the People has its origins in the ruling African National Congress, so it is no surprise that the very fact of that dissidence and the still-ongoing defections from the ANC to COPE, has heightened tensions and resentment, not to mention deep distrust.

Furthermore, as with so much of South African politics in recent years, the divisions do not really result from irreconcilable differences over policy and ideology so much as differences over personality and approach. Just as not one in ten South Africans can articulate serious policy differences between Thabo Mbaki and Jacob Zuma, not many more can articulate diferences between the ANC and COPE. From a policy vantage point, both sides still have to make their case to the voters, though the burden probably falls more heavily on COPE since the newcomers need to make the case as to why people should move away from their support of the ANC, which, given the liberation struggle, is far more than an ordinary political party. In all likelihood, in fact, the party that will suffer most at the hands of COPE will be the Democratic Alliance, with DA losses especially likely from among the party’s black supporters, though observers also wonder which party will garner the support of the country’s burgeoning middle class.

And yet it is precisely because of the internecine nature of the political conflict in South Africa that things have ratcheted up to such a tense level. Underlying the quest for political power is a deep sense of betrayal on both sides. And betrayal brings out visceral emotions and visceral responses. As a result, reports of election-related violence have begun pouring in. Suffice it to say that a serious uptick in violence as the election progresses would represent a horrible step back for the country’s political culture.

Now, it should be pointed out that COPE, at least, believes that many of the reports of violence are themselves overstated and are the result of the ANC concocting tales of chaos and blaming COPE operatives. Furthermore, COPE asserts that the very spreading of these stories might itself prove to foment violent responses. Nonetheless, the weeks preceding the election will bear watching, for the country’s political process really might be at stake.

In what figures to be  an explosive judgment, it appears that South Africa’s  National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is set to drop its corruption charges against ANC President Jacob Zuma, clearing the way for him to become the country’s next President following April’s election. The justification for the NPA’s decision is still-unclear allegations of machinations, apparently on the part of Thabo Mbeki’s administration, that some on the media are beginning to call “Mbekigate.” Mbeki’s office denies any involvement whatsoever.

Soon enough, presumably, the whole sordid story will emerge, but the NPA may have faced an impossible dilemma. No matter what happened, it would face accusations of politicizing the judicial process, a politicization that the politicians had already long undertaken.

So what are the likely consequences? Well, the ANC is very, very, very happy this morning. The corruption charges hanging over Zuma had caused many to flee the ANC and many more to consider doing so. The ANC decision should stanch that bleeding for those who were more concerned with the disruptive effects of a Zuma prosecution. Of course the very fact that the likely future president was in that position will remain disquieting to many, but this is the best possible outcome for Zuma and the ANC. Consequently, it is pretty bad news for the Congress of the People, which almost certainly has benefited from the Zuma charges even if only as an unspoken subtext. The newest developments are also bad news for Thabo Mbeki, whose reputation is likely to take yet another hit if Machiavellian maneuverings on his part really provide the bedrock for the decision to drop the charges. Finally, interim President Kgalema Motlanthe will assuredly find himself back in the shadows after April.

Expect a good deal of commentary on this across the spectrum of South African media in the days and weeks to come. And with it expect a healthy dose of recriminations. But let there be no doubt about it — this is the best possible gift the ANC could have received heading into the election. It would be an extreme irony if this gift comes as the result of Thabo Mbeki’s attempts to work behind the scenes to undermine Zuma.