S Africa opposition adopts Trump-like immigrant attacks

Bloomberg

Shorn of their most important campaign weapon, scandal-ridden former President Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s biggest opposition parties are turning to populism as they scramble for votes in the most competitive election since the end of apartheid.
The two main challengers to the ruling African National Congress (ANC) are increasingly echoing the anti-immigrant and race-baiting bias that’s come to dominate politics in the US under Donald Trump and President Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, as well as Italy and parts of Eastern Europe.
“Secure our borders” reads a campaign poster of the second-biggest party, the Democratic Alliance (DA). Its spokesman on immigration proposes a “humane” deportation programme for undocumented migrants he says are a major source of crime and who take welfare checks meant for South Africans.
The signature poster of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the third-biggest party, features a picture of its leader, Julius Malema, emblazoned with “Son of The Soil,” a slogan that alienates Asian, mixed-race and white South Africans.
“In South Africa, as in many countries around the world right now, you have this fairly rapid creep to the right and nativism,” said Claude Baissac, the head of Johannesburg-based political risk consultancy
Eunomix Business & Economics Ltd. “Trump and Bolsonaro made it not only acceptable but fashionable. The DA has very cynically and opportunistically taken the nationalist route.”
In the case of the DA, analysts say the strategy threatens to alienate its traditionally liberal base. It could also heighten tensions in a country already riven by racial divisions and periodic violence.
Anti-foreigner violence led to more than 60 deaths and 50,000 being made homeless in 2008. Similar violence has regularly resurfaced since, including this year in the south eastern city of Durban.
The dilemma for the two parties is renewed interest in the ANC after the popular Cyril Ramaphosa replaced Zuma as president last year and pledged to crack down on corruption.
That’s left both the DA and EFF seeking ways to gain voters’ attention three years after municipal elections handed the ruling party its lowest share
of the vote since it took power in 1994.

South Africa labour union urges Mboweni to retire
Bloomberg

South Africa’s largest labour federation wants Finance Minister Tito Mboweni to practice what he preaches, and retire. That may not be because he’s too old, but rather that they just don’t like him.
When Mboweni was appointed in October to replace Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) made it clear it should only be a transitional move, Michael Shingange, Cosatu’s first deputy president, said.
“This is a man who says people who are 55 years old must retire because they are too old,” Shingange said. “It would be a huge shock for us if Tito Mboweni was to avail himself to be the minister of finance,” after the May election, and that is something Cosatu would oppose, he said.