In an otherwise perceptive article in The New York Times, Michael Wines seems somewhat nonplussed by the possibility that Thabo Mbeki appears to be entering a lame duck phase as the South African President.
With that status comes more vocal complaints from within the ANC coalition ranks than we may have seen before, especially from the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). And yet COSATU and the SACP should be decidedly unsurprising sources of criticism for anyone with even a modicum of understanding of South African politics.
