President Jacob Zuma’s attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, with a message that investment and business are key to South Africa’s economic success.
He leaves behind a still simmering row caused by the Zelda la Grange, the former personal assistant to Zuma’s late predecessor Nelson Mandela, saying she would feel more welcome in France than in her native South Africa.
La Grange says potential white investors from Europe and the United State should be told they’re not welcome in South Africa.
Zelda la Grange’s apologised for any hurt her remarks might have caused but she has not withdrawn her assertion that President Jacob Zuma’s making whites the scapegoat for South Africa’s ills.
Deputy telecommunications minister Hlengiwe Mkize proposes she and la Grange meet to go back to basics and discuss the evils of colonialism.
Zuma will have his work cut out at Davos selling the country’s national development plan in the teeth of new evidence that race remains a highly sensitive and potentially disruptive issue in South Africa 21 years after the ANC took power.
The ruling party’s incensed at a Constitutional Court decision overturning an election court ban on the opposition Democratic Alliance saying Zuma has stolen from the people by improperly enriching himself from the publicly funded upgrade of security at his private residence in Kwazulu/Natal.