Jacob reached the top of his ladder

For those of you who are not following South African news, there was an election this Wednesday. Big turnout. We're talking nearly 80% of registered voters. They're putting Canada's 59.1% to shame.

I'll admit that electoral politics is not one of my major interests, but South Africa's campaign, which essentially started once Jacob Zuma replaced former president Thalo Mbeki as the leader of the African National Congress in 2007, has been very engaging to follow. For the first time since 1994, members of the ANC broke off to form their own party, the Congress of the People; Zuma's rape and corruption charges followed him throughout this process, the former dropped in 2008 and the latter three weeks before the election; and in the end, it was the ANC that took away a nearly 2/3 majority in the election this week.

As the Mail and Guardian said this morning, Zuma's success was based highly on his and his party's clever campaigning, which "framed the 2009 election as a face-off between well-off blacks and whites on the one hand and the poor black majority on the other -- rather than on an examination of the government's record in power." I'm interested to talk with professors and others at the Centre for Civil Society (our partner school in Durban) to find out more about where they think Zuma will go as a leader in the coming months, and what that might mean for crime, health, and poverty in the country.

Here's part 1 of Al Jazeera's coverage election, including a discussion with a panel made up of ANC and Democratic Alliance party members and an ANC critic:



5 days and counting! I need to make a sleep sheet...