… and people wonder why South Africans are so worried about their country’s situation, people tell others to stop being negative, the country is in good shape.

Yes it is in all honesty BUT since when is it acceptable to discuss whether the countries “sure” next president will prison colours or not

Guess it all depends on how much Holphe managed to bribe the judges involved in Zuma’s corruption case…

Cronin: Zuma won’t wear orange
26/07/2008 21:04 – (SA)

Durban – African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma will not need to wear orange prison garb when he becomes president of the country, the South African Communist Party’s (SACP) deputy secretary general Jeremy Cronin said in Durban on Saturday.

Cronin was addressing the SACP’s KwaZulu-Natal provincial council.

“Next year the ANC, supported by the alliance, will win the election. The next president (of the country) will be Jacob Zuma.

“I have to disagree with (Julius) Malema. That president will not be wearing orange,” said Cronin, referring to the ANC Youth League president’s comments earlier this week that Zuma would rule from prison if he was convicted.

Huge challenges

Cronin said that while there were no questions about the ANC-led alliance winning the next election, due to be held in April 2009, it might not supersede the results achieved in 2004.

He also warned of the challenges facing the tripartite alliance of the ANC, the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

“We know there are huge challenges. Do we have the capacity as the Communist Party? Do we have the will? We can think we have won at Polokwane, but things can go wrong.”

He said that the three alliance partners needed to “consolidate” as “the strategic political centre.”

Cronin said that while alliance partners were working together in KwaZulu-Natal, this was not necessarily the case in other parts of the country.

“(ANC) Comrades sometimes forget there is an alliance. It is important for the ANC to work with its alliance partners,” he said.

‘Monumental stupidity’

Speaking about the fuel crisis as well as the energy crisis, Cronin questioned those who had been responsible for planning, especially with regards to the energy sector in the late 1990s. Their decisions, he said “had led us into monumental stupidity”.

The Polokwane conference had presented the SACP with an opportunity to question those behind the policies that had led to the Eskom crisis.

He said the country had acquired huge debts for what he described as “vanity projects” and were subject to tenders that were driving corruption within the government.

Many of these projects, he said, had benefited “white capital” and an “elite BEE group”.

He question the decision to build aluminium smelters in Richards Bay, which he said employed about 6 000 people, but yet consumed 10% of the country’s electricity.

“Energy cannot be hostage to other interests,” he said, adding that the aluminium smelters were an example of government pandering to big business.

“We know they get it (their electricity) cheap. They don’t tell us how much they pay.”

He repeated an SACP call to have Sasol and Eskom renationalised.