With so many Communists in control of economic departments, the SACP realises that this is a unique chance to capture real control of the country's government. (The M&G notes that "Countrywide the SACP has 99 legislators, 37 in the National Assembly".) Zuma, too, knows he has to tread carefully to restrain this powerful nucleus in government, so as not to frighten the horses in the corporate world. But he is skilled at playing tactical games. Repeatedly, he has said of South Africa's macro-economic policies: "Nothing will change." Repeatedly, Cosatu has retorted: "Everything will change."
The view of this article is that the ANC fairly soon will begin to dismantle Mbeki's macro-economic programme of Growth, Employment and Reconstruction (GEAR). Cosatu and the SACP are running out of time. The masses of the impoverished - the great majority of them black - are becoming impatient, and outbreaks, often violent, occur in the townships. Promised relief from poverty by the Zuma election campaign, they want that promise to be kept now. Zuma's backers may have no choice than to go for the jugular now instead of later.
