African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma was elected president of South Africa by parliament on Wednesday and set boosting the economy and creating jobs as his immediate priorities.
Zuma, jailed for 10 years under apartheid before going into exile, is the nation’s fourth head of state since the end of white rule in 1994.
An eight-year corruption case nearly ruined him, but graft charges against him were dropped shortly before the election on April 22, which his ruling party won handsomely.
Aside from fighting poverty, crime and AIDS, Zuma faces the task of guiding Africa’s biggest economy, which may already be in recession, through the global financial crisis.
Zuma moved quickly to reassure foreign investors who will be watching to see if the charismatic former guerrilla steers the economy to the left despite his assurances of policy continuity.
He also sought to comfort trade union allies who helped him become president and may want payback in the form of more government spending.
“We must move quickly to implement the framework agreed by the government, business and labor to protect jobs and boost the economy,” Zuma said.
Zuma will be inaugurated tomorrow and will name a Cabinet on Sunday. The 67-year-old was deputy president for six years before being sacked by his predecessor, former president Thabo Mbeki, in 2005.
The new government is expected to keep conservative monetary and fiscal policies to cushion the impact of the global crisis.
The fate of respected Finance Minister Trevor Manuel will be closely monitored by the markets, who view him highly and have praised his management of the economy.
Manuel stood alongside Zuma as they were sworn in as members of parliament.
A source familiar with the issue said the long-serving finance minister may be chosen as a deputy president, tasked with heading a planning commission from within the presidency.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees