Zuma obsessed with re-election - Mazibuko

2012-11-23 14:31

Lindiwe Mazibuko (Picture: Sapa)

Johannesburg - President Jacob Zuma is only obsessed with being re-elected and has no interest in delivering on "transformative objectives", Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko said on Friday.

"The most successful leaders in office try to deliver on transformative objectives using transactional skills. Mr Zuma, uniquely among the world's democratic leaders, possesses neither skills set," she said.

"He has no conceptual engagement with any public policy problem, other than his all-consuming obsession with being re-elected."

Mazibuko was speaking at a Daily Maverick conference in Johannesburg. She said Zuma had failed to deliver what he was meant to.

"His supporters, both inside the ANC and outside, are aware of this."

She described 2012, in the words of journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell, as a "tipping point", where the political centre had slipped away from the ANC.

"The president and his government are beginning to suffer from what academics have described as the power curse," Mazibuko said.

"In the biblical story of David and Goliath, Goliath's superior advantages misled him into an inferior strategy and this led to his death. This story may sooner rather than later serve as a metaphor of how Mr Zuma's political dominance expired."

- SAPA