Family and favour at the court of Jacob Zuma
Jacob Zuma’s role as both state and party president is significantly underpinned by those who pay court to him on the basis of personal loyalty, patriarchal fealty and hope for personal gain, his formal authority buttressed by political patronage and protection which extends to those close to him. However, Zuma combines his role of tribal patriarch with that of his role at the head of a shadow state, his ‘family’ extending beyond close relatives to include business associates with shady connections. Zuma is an accidental president who ascended to the office because he was not Thabo Mbeki. He may not be any more inclined to cohabit with the morally dubious than his predecessor (who, notoriously, shielded Chief of Police Jackie Selebi from investigation for linkages to organised crime). Nonetheless, it is difficult to believe that a man deemed by a court to have been in a corrupt relationship with Shabir Shaik (eventually sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for offences committed in connection with the notorious 1998 arms deal) and who was facing some 783 criminal charges involving fraud, corruption and racketeering would have secured the presidency had he not been able to place himself at the head of a ‘coalition of the aggrieved’ who wished to bring Mbeki’s rule and influence to an abrupt end. That this coalition was broad-based is generally accepted, receiving strong backing not merely from the organised left within the Tripartite Alliance but ethnic support from within the ANC of his home province. But in addition, he received strong support from black business interests. Mbeki may have been the chief champion of BEE, but his challenger received support from a motley group of business players, some of whom switched their support from Mbeki to Zuma when they identified him as the rising man; from established business persons from KwaZulu-Natal who had long been close to him; from those who had lost out or had felt disadvantaged under Mbeki; and not least, from major figures within the Indian business community (again, significantly rooted in KwaZulu-Natal). In addition, he was backed by powerful figures within the ANC who had either been convicted of criminal offences (such as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela) or who were under investigation for criminal acts, some of these for alleged involvement in tendering scams (such as Ngoako Ramathlodi and Angie Motsheka) (Southall 2009). In Zuma, powerful elements within the party saw a man who would not be overly troubled by ethical or legal concerns when it became time to cash in their cards for supporting him in his conjoined struggle for political survival and to stay out of jail. The evidence laid before the court in Shabir Shaik’s trial of Zuma’s heavy
Political and bureaucratic corruption during President Jacob Zuma's first term in office : causes, consequences and measurements.
Political and bureaucratic corruption is at the core of the South African political debate in the current juncture. The suggestion that there has been failure by government to deal with political corruption is popular and critics of the ruling party have been vocal in that regard. The effectiveness of the constitutional measures to curb political corruption has also been frequently questioned in South Africa. What triggers this research is the desire to ascertain whether corruption levels have changed during President Zuma’s tenure. Using qualitative methods of research which involves examining, analyzing and interpreting various secondary data, this study focuses on current South African affairs, particularly President Zuma’s tenure, exploring the root causes and examining the consequences of political corruption. Establishing the causes and consequences of corruption is of much importance in the study of corruption as remedies for reducing incidences of corruption stem from such studies. While measuring corruption has proven to be a challenging task in the study of corruption, the need to further interrogate the methods of measuring corruption is significant for understanding and testing theories related to corruption. To achieve its objectives, this dissertation looks into incidences or cases of political corruption in South Africa during President Zuma’s tenure in order to establish the damaging effects of political corruption as well as the effectiveness of the government in dealing with such cases.
Gender Pay Gap in the European Union Labor Market
The participation of women in the European Union labor market has been increasing over recent years, putting an end to the notion that women are a marginal part of the labor force. However, such increased integration of women into paid work has neither ended the traditional gender divide between jobs nor it translated into gender equality in terms of economic opportunity and economic participation in the labor market. The purpose of the paper is to briefly discuss the gender pay gap in the EU labor market. The paper defines gender pay gap and provides a brief theoretical overview of the underlying causes of such pay asymmetry between men and women. Statistics provided for EU 25 reveal that the current policy attempts to reduce such a gender asymmetry still lack improvement in practice. The paper concludes with selected policy suggestions aiming to make a progress in the issue of the gender equality in pay.