The Zuma Years. South Africa's Changing Face of Power, by Richard Calland

The Zuma Years. South Africa's Changing Face of Power, by Richard Calland. Zebra Press; Random House Struik; Cape Town, South Africa 2013; ISBN 9781770220881 / ISBN 978-1-77022-088-1

The Zuma Years. South Africa's Changing Face of Power, by Richard Calland. Zebra Press; Random House Struik; Cape Town, South Africa 2013; ISBN 9781770220881 / ISBN 978-1-77022-088-1

In The Zuma Years, Richard Calland answers questions of eminent importance, as he presents a vivid, up-to-date picture of the workings of power in Jacob Zuma’s South Africa. The face of power in South Africa is rapidly changing, for better and for worse.

Richard Calland  

The Zuma Years: South Africa's Changing Face of Power is the sequel to my 2006 Anatomy of South Africa: Who Holds the Power? As Anthony Sampson did with a changing Britain in the 1960s, I am trying to chart the shifts in power and politics during a period of intense social transformation in South Africa's history. Halfway through writing The Zuma Years, I looked again at Sampson's 1966 Anatomy of Britain Today (written four years after his first book in 1962) and read in the preface his admission that his second book was 75 per cent the same as his first! In contrast, The Zuma Years is no more than 2 or 3 per cent the same as Anatomy of South Africa. This is partly because I am foolishly ambitious as well as industrious, partly because a lot has changed since 2006 and partly because I take on new aspects of power in South Africa. So this book features chapters on, for example, foreign policy making and foreign policy makers, not least because it came to my attention that the first book was apparently very popular with the diplomatic corps in South Africa, who would recommend it to new arrivals as an accessible yet sufficiently detailed exposition of the institutions and individuals who run the country. It is also an area of policy making that I am especially interested in and which is scantily covered by the media, commentators and analysts. There are also new chapters on the universities, the professions, money and politics, the boardrooms, and traditional leaders - all sites of power, social advancement and change (or not, as in the case of the traditional leaders). Because The Zuma Years seeks to provide a contemporaneous X-ray of power relations at the point at which I signed off on the proofs (in mid-July 2013), it is also a hostage to fortune: new events may intercede and change things, perhaps dramatically, and/or people may leave their jobs and move on to new ones. (As if to prove the point, in the week before this book went to print, President Zuma announced a cabinet reshuffle, presumably because he wanted to add further excitement to the final days of the publishing process, as it required various passages to be completely rewritten.) Even the biggest events, however, are unlikely to seriously undermine the rationale of this book - more than anything, if it is successful it will be because it provides readers with the tools to assess for themselves the nature of political power in South Africa in the future. In this sense, it is less of a map and more of a compass. In my determination to bring South African politics vividly to life, I have sought to emphasise its personal, human side, probably at the expense of hard, dry, empirical analysis, although, thanks to the sponsorship of City Press newspaper, I was able to assemble a small team of researchers to assist with this book, which, in turn, means that it covers more ground and digs somewhat deeper, with more evidence and less anecdote, than Anatomy of South Africa. (...)

This is an excerpt from the book: The Zuma Years. South Africa's Changing Face of Power, by Richard Calland.

Title: The Zuma Years
Subtitle: South Africa's Changing Face of Power
Author: Richard Calland
Publisher: Zebra Press; Random House Struik
Cape Town, South Africa 2013
ISBN 9781770220881 / ISBN 978-1-77022-088-1
Softcover, 15x23 cm, 464 pages

Calland, Richard im Namibiana-Buchangebot

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