Zuma's MK party dead by 2026?

In Africa, only the group survives through constant co-operation. Any planner needs to know Africa's law: Loners Get Eaten. 

Before I turned transport writer, I was a freelance political journalist, earning a pittance reporting for news wire Sapa and working for the Mafikeng Mail from the wild North West province of South Africa, headquartered in the dusty town of Mafikeng. (Poor I as I was, I still got taken for lunch by CIA members who drove all the way from the USA embassy to check if I could become an asset. Me saying I don't even watch movies with American flags in them, quickly got me struck of THAT list.)   

Mafikeng was where former Premier Popo Molefe bussed in fans of the ANC to overturn the former Bophutatswana government and, incidentally, where the local toughs of the Baralong boo Seithiro tribe instead showed the wannabe toughs of my tribe, who called themselves the Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging, their feet of clay. This after a carload of drunk AWB louts cruising for trouble, found it. Big time. They were unceremoniously dragged from their car and executed on the side of a road and left for the stray dogs to sniff and journalist to find.

In the manner of the pawpaw hitting the fan, you could say this was a turning point in the shaping of popular thinking the new, democratic South Africa. A few months later another turning point happened, when those bussed-in ANC fans started throwing stones at Molefe's office window after the many promises he had made, failed to realise. 

I headlined the report, "The fans are hitting the Popo" and decided to stop my career as political reporter. There was no way I could ever top that headline. Instead, three partners and I started Scribe Publishers (Pty) Ltd. 

Since Mafikeng, my political instincts have been honed ever finer on the grindstone of life, which is why I made the prediction below after this worried report on Jacob Zuma's Russian-backed MK party: (https://nationalsecuritynews.com/2024/02/jacob-zuma-the-mk-party-and-the-kremlins-gru/)

My prediction was in "deep" Afrikaans (in full below), but it boils down to this: Any Western or Oriental plan which does not fit into Africa's feudal system, will fail on the Mother Continent. Because in Africa, the herd, troop, pack or tribe survives via mutual favours and constant co-operation. Loners, well, they get eaten. Read more on this in Robert Ardrey's "Social Contract".

Antropologist Ardrey has fallen out of favour with woke intellectuals, but his sonorous observations remain as accurate as ever.

I predict Zuma's MK party will die with him, likely after less than two years of infighting, i.e. during 2026. Not because the dancing octogenerian is getting old, though he clearly is one fist-raised shuffle from the grave.

No, MK will dissolve in the wake of Zuma, or perhaps even during the wake for Zuma, because they tagged their aspirations onto a wily old tribal leader who rose from cow herder to president because he understood patronage better than most. And the cadres in this motley tag team do not.

Instead, the MK party was born from individual members' greedy desire "to eat" government tenders, not from their desire to better the whole group or grow an economy to make more tenders. This is because the old ANC guard, which Zuma personifies, only know the socialist principle of nobody owning anything, which always results in slaughtering of cows instead of milking them, and braaiing of sheep instead of shearing their wool. 

Are there young guns with new ammo?

The only question going forward is whether Africa's youth can change their grandparents' socialist ways? 

It is a rather important question, as sub-Saharan Africa's young cohort are set to make up 25% of the global population by 2050, amid falling birth rates everywhere else. There are already six young Africans for every old European, as written about by author Paul Morland; and a "Youthquake" of young Africans that will cause a seismic shift in the world's economy, as enumerated by demographer Edward Paice in the video below. 

As always, time will have to tell.

My prediction in "deep" Afrikaans

Re Zuma en die Russe, 'n riem onder die hart is die natuurwet: Afrika Breek Als. 

Enige doelwit, ideologie, slu plan of grootse drome gebore uit 'n selfsugtige Westerse "Cogito Ergo Sum" denke; asook enige aspirasies geskoei op die Tau filosofie van "Ek Is Omdat Ek Verbeter" uit die Ooste, kom op die Moeder Kontinent tot korte mette.

Al wat oorbly is die Afrikaan se kern oorlewingstrategie: Ek Is Omdat Ons Is. Zuma was nog altyd 'n bobaas spanspeler vir die Zulus. Maar al die ekkes wat hom nou in die MK party ingespan het, het te min Onse in hulle ponde om hom te oorleef.