POSTPONED- Dinner Briefing: South Africa – The Rise of Jacob Zuma and an Uncertain Future for the ANC?

In the third of our highly popular dinner briefing strand, this off-the-record background briefing will be followed by a 3-course dinner plus wine. If you have any special dietary requirements, please email [email protected] in advance.

Arriving at 7pm, guests will be given a glass of wine as they sit and listen to the discussion.

Following this, they will be served dinner while having the chance to continue the discussion informally with the panellists at their tables.

From 10pm onwards the discussion will continue informally in the members area.

General elections in South Africa will take place on 22 April 2009 and the ANC, led by Jacob Zuma appears set to win. It follows a tumultuous 18 months that have been wracked by high level corruption scandals, bitter rivalries and battles for the very ideological soul of the party. The ANC’s response to the crisis will define both the future of the ANC and the whole of South Africa.

This evening our panel will discuss the rise of Jacob Zuma against this background and look at the future of the ANC. Will the party remain deeply divided or will Zuma’s mass support enable him to tackle some of the biggest domestic problems facing the state, including policy failures in areas such as health, education and crime? Will he be able to address the fundamental economic imbalance that makes South Africa the most unequal society on earth? And on the foreign policy front how will Zuma and the ANC interact with the power sharing government in Zimbabwe between ZANU-PF (an ANC ally) and the MDC?

Speakers:

Andrew Feinstein is author of After the Party: Corruption, the ANC and South Africa’s Uncertain Future, which is a hard-hitting evaluation of contemporary South African politics.

Mark Ashurst is Director of the Africa Research Insitutute

Wilf Mbanga is a journalist and editor of The Zimbabwean and a commentator on South Africa’s influence in Zimbabwe

Others tbc

Allan Little is a BBC journalist with several years’  experience covering South Africa