Geography Essay

Sub-Saharan Africa in the news
Jacob Zuma’s resignation
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Sub-Saharan Africa in the news
Jacob Zuma’s resignation
On Monday, February 12, the ruling South Africa party – the African National Congress (ANC) – demanded the resignation of the country’s president Jacob Zuma. To fulfill the requirement, the ANC gave Zuma 48 hours, threatening to begin the procedure of a vote of no confidence in the opposite case. The president of South Africa is elected by the parliament (National Assembly), in which the ANC has a majority. At the same time, Zuma is a promoter of the Congress itself. However, against the background of recent corruption scandals, the mood in the party has changed (Timeslive, 2018).
In 2014, after another ANC victory in the elections, Zuma became president for the second time, and soon the opposition demanded his resignation. During his second term, it did it five times. Zuma was accused of spending 16 million dollars on his residence, and refusing to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, although the warrant for his arrest was issued by the International Criminal Court. Finally, the opposition collected 783 episodes of corruption, extortion, and fraud in concluding state contracts for the purchase of weapons (Timeslive, 2018).
The resignation of Zuma did not change the political situation in South Africa. The ANC replaced Zuma with another person from the party. South Africa is the autocracy of the black majority. Since 1994, the same party, the ANC, has ruled the country.

And this is not surprising since white people were practically driven out of the political life of the country. While blacks make up about 80% of the population of South Africa, then, naturally, they vote for their party (Timeslive, 2018). Since 1994, the ANC wins each parliamentary election and puts its people at the helm. White, “colored” and Indians makeup to 20% of the population and are disunited in their political preferences.
Zuma’s resignation is a planned action in the ANC to make the former president a scapegoat, blame all sins and direct a stream of criticism of the society towards him. He was not allowed to sit until the deadline to distract the South African society from the pressing problems that fuel dissatisfaction with the current authorities. The alignment of forces in the political arena of South Africa can be changed by overwhelming political reform. The two main changes of the reform shall be:
popular election of the president
quotas for the factions in the lower house of parliament on racial and ethnic grounds, so that Indo-Europeans, colored, and blacks could occupy a limited number of places
creation of a coalition government made from all the ethnic groups
A similar scheme works in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the power is divided between Croats, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims. However, in South Africa, this is impossible until the incumbent authorities take such a decision. It is much easier and more effective to pull the blanket over and control all the resources. South Africa is also far from democracy, like most other countries in Africa.

Bibliography
Timeslive (2018). Jacob Zuma has resigned. Times Live. Retrieved February 27, 2018, from https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2018-02-14-jacob-zuma-has-resigned/