Bruce’s List: A guide to informed reads.
It’s all go for US president Donald Trump. Do I get the slight impression he is becoming marginally less insane? Yesterday he turned his gaze to Africa, or, at least, two African leaders. One of them, Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari, was in London for Trump’s call. It was, in fact, a thoughtful thing to do to make the call so publicly. Buhari has been receiving medical treatment in London for so long now that many of his countrymen had begun to speculate he might be dead. Trump then called President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria. These would have been fairly bland calls, agreeing on the need to keep up excellent relations and stuff. But Trump reserved the invitation of a state visit to the US for Buhari only. As Zuma has increasingly looked East, and with a steady stream of anti-Western invective that pours out of official SA daily, that’s probably little wonder.
Bigger for Trump would have been, between calling Zuma and Buhari, appointing a former Goldman Sachs banker, Steven Mnuchin, as treasury secretary. This after spending his entire presidential campaign last year castigating Hillary Clinton for her ties to Goldman Sachs. Whatever Trump is doing, he isn’t “draining the swamp” in Washington as he promised to do. This is how you write an appointment story, by the way.
While the Mnuchin appointment will have cheered the president up, the resignation of his national security chief, Gen Michael Flynn, will not have. Flynn has been in the job less than a month but got himself caught talking to the Russian ambassador about how to get around US sanctions against Moscow, an outrageous thing to do, especially if you’re a Republican. It deepens suspicions about the Trump administration’s ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Flynn just had to go.
Yesterday this column asked if Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation speech last Thursday was a failure or a coup. Max du Preez, in his blog this morning, leans towards coup. I’m still sceptical but so many smart observers are saying it nowadays it may well be true. For the moment, though, I prefer the slightly more sceptical approach of Du Preez’ colleague, Adriaan Basson, who sees signs of panic in much of Zuma’s recent behaviour. The soldiers weren’t at parliament as a sign of strength, Basson seems to be saying, but as a sign of weakness. I agree. He is in too much trouble in his own province, KwaZulu Natal, to be comfortable about controlling his succession.
Happy Valentine’s Day
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