Anxiously awaiting Zuma

ALL EYES will be on parliament on Thursday night as President Jacob Zuma presents his state of the nation address – as well they might, because there are many different views on just what the state of our country actually is.

All of them, though, are united by one common thread: anxiety. The jobless want to know what hope there is for them after the year that was designated as theirs rendered nothing.

The middle and upper classes will be wanting to be reassured that the assets that they possess will not be further squeezed in another vain bid to bridge the ever widening chasm between the poor and everyone else in this nation.

Public servants in other under-performing and dysfunctional provinces will be watching keenly to see if their fate won’t be the same as their colleagues in Limpopo which was effectively nationalised at the end of last year. Politicians will be watching closely; the opposition because this is the year when the ANC doesn’t just celebrate its centenary, but is at its lowest ebb ever in terms of its long-term alliance with Cosatu and the South African Communist Party, and is riven by factionalism internally.

For the Members of Parliament on the opposition benches, the time has never been riper to take advantage of the legendary liberation movement’s uncharacteristic weakness, for other politicians on the government side, choosing camps has never been more fraught with tension or so important.

When Zuma gets up to speak on Thursday he will do so in the context of a world in ferment, with the northern part of our continent in the thrall of people’s revolutions while the old order in Europe implodes economically.

But he will also be officially opening a year which will be book-ended by the critically important ANC national conference in Mangaung at the end of the year.

It’s a conference that carries the very real risk that he could be rendered impotent, just as delegates did to his predecessor in Polokwane in 2007, a lame duck president hamstrung by a party that has lost faith in him.

Or, knowing Zuma, he could defy all odds and secure a second term to begin entrenching his legacy in the South African political firmament.

Whatever the case, the first step of that journey – for all of us – will be revealed on Thursday night.