Sean Jacobs
Note from a friend who closely watches the South African political scene:

Below [the link follows] is a JZ [Jacob Zuma] post-Durban posting [the ruling party, the ANC, held its policy conference there last weekend], on Baobab, The Economist‘s Africa blog. Am I wrong to scratch my head at everyone claiming JZ emerges from Durban with his power reasserted? Is all it takes one speech where JZ wields the rhetorical hammer and tells the [trade] unions what they want to hear. Is this what he always does to everyone, save [ANC Youth League leader Julius] Malema?. I am just thinking about the media’s really zero-sum coverage of [Zuma] … He is either a dead man walking or the undisputed leader of the party. I actually got the same sense when reading [say Mail & Guardian political reporter] Mandy Rossouw‘s coverage of the NGC [that’s the national general council of the ANC, the aforementioned policy conference] … ‘JZ is back.’ Am I missing something here? Was there more going on behind the scenes than just this speech? Sure Malema got the public slapdown, but that has happened before.

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