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Zuma legacy: the good, the bad

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Former President Jacob Zuma’s presidency was riddled by scandal and controversy but there were also policy changes and implementations that took place under his leadership.

Political Analyst Enoch Maponya says even though Zuma’s legacy will be overshadowed by corruption and he was still able to bring change in a positive way to South Africa.

Maponya lauded Zuma for announcing free higher education for the poor.

“Some will say his move is opportunistic but he always talked of radical economic transformation. When you are a leader sometimes, you need to take unilateral decisions, especially if it benefits the majority. We must not look at how the announcement was made let’s look at the outcome. The outcome addresses what we have been looking for,” says Maponya.

He says often utterances made by Zuma without consulting his party, what he said would later be adopted as policy.

“Like land expropriation without compensation, those are the things that became popular even in his party. It became one of their resolutions at the December 2017 conference.”

Maponya also says under Zuma, the issue of HIV and Aids received more attention.

“It was during his time that the HIV Aids issue received a lot of attention, to the point where life expectancy increased,” says Maponya.

It was under Zuma’s administration that South Africa moved to have the South Africa does have the largest antiretroviral therapy programme in the world.

Even though he is often criticized for increasing his cabinet size, Maponya says this was a good move.

“The representation in cabinet was now wide spread. People of all provinces began to feel like they were part of democracy. All provinces had a stake in the execution of duties for our government,” says Maponya. He says this was also an opportunity to fully implement the NDP but unfortunately, this was not to be.

Another political analyst, Professor Anthoni van Nieuwkerk, says Zuma can be accredited with the establishment of the Department of Planning Monitoring & Evaluation.

In terms of foreign policy, Van Nieuwkerk says Zuma leaves a legacy of establishing the BRICS relationship. Besides BRICS, he says under Zuma did very little for foreign policy, especially within the African continent.

Van Nieuwkerk says under Zuma, South Africa could not play a big role in peace keeping in the continent because the budget given to defence was not enough.

“The current foreign policy is a former shell of itself. We can’t keep the peace in the neighbourhood because we do not have the muscle to do so.”

“We lost our way internationally. What did South Africa stand for? The image of South Africa also became tainted,” says Van Nieuwkerk.

Unlike Maponya, Van Nieuwkerk says Zuma unilaterally announcing free higher education is failure of leadership and a legacy of his presidency. “It was very opportunistic of President Jacob Zuma to announce free education on the eve of his last day as the president of the ANC. What kind of policy intervention is this?”

He says the low quality of basic education is also part of Zuma’s legacy.

“In terms of education we remain in a crisis. Our children cannot read and write very well. Our students are not necessarily prepared for University. Half of them drop out after a few months.”

“The hall mark of the Jacob Zuma administration is the persistence of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Under his watch, service protests have grown exponentially. This is the worst measure of success or failure by a president,” says Van Nieuwkerk.

Maponya agrees.

“He will be remembered for his association with the controversial Gupta family. It’s going to be very difficult for him to run away from that one and the fact that he always had cases in court that exposed him as a president who did not respect the constitution,” says van Nieuwkerk.

 

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