Car troubles

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma’s dose of flu might have compounded things, but it was not just his delivery that was off yesterday: the State of the Nation address was essentially lacklustre and did little to reassure those seeking leadership.

Most observers highlighted his commitment to the National Development Plan, which was indeed a reassuring aspect of the speech. For the rest, it served to highlight the problems facing the country, but gave little indication of how they would be ad- dressed.

He rather gave an impression of somebody trapped between constituencies – mostly between business and the trade unions – and not sure what to do about it.

Zuma’s tendency will probably be to appease all, a formula for more of the sort of inactivity that has marked his presidency to date.

He did announce several reviews of policies or difficult issues – teacher remuneration and land ownership among them – but it would have been more reassuring to hear that he already had plans to address them.

Perhaps, though, South Africans got a more telling insight of what the future holds from events on the streets of Cape Town yesterday.

Thousands of the city’s residents ended up spending the better part of their evening in their cars as streets were sealed off for the Zuma cavalcade. Heavily armed police brusquely dismissed the complaints of weary commuters as they sat in long queues waiting for the great man to make his way to Parliament.

Up on Table Mountain a squad of motorbike-rid- ing policemen surveyed the roads below. Machine guns bristled along the route. It felt like overkill. It felt like disdain for the little people. It felt uncomfortably like the sort of thing

that, say, Robert Mugabe would inflict on his people.