Dem
51
GOP
49
As long as we're on the foreign affairs beat, South Africa also had an election in the last week in which they returned to power a Prime Minister with scandals on his ledger. In their case, it was Cyril Ramaphosa. His leadership has been less-than-stellar and, in particular, South Africa is in the midst of a nationwide electricity shortage. He might also be crooked; a search of his farm revealed half a million dollars in cash stuffed into a leather sofa. Needless to say, there aren't a lot of legitimate explanations for having that much currency, or storing it in that particular way. Nonetheless, Ramaphosa managed to quash both an investigation and possible impeachment proceedings. And his main opponent, former health minister Zweli Mkhize, also has corruption issues (he and his family were beneficiaries of a contract awarded by... Health Minister Zweli Mkhize).
The upshot is that there were two problematic candidates, both of them from the only party that has held power in South Africa since apartheid ended (the African National Conference, or ANC). And so, as a tiebreaker, the members of the ANC leadership conference decided the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know, and stuck with Ramaphosa, 2,476 votes to 1,897.
Foreign affairs is not exactly our area of expertise, and certainly South Africa doesn't loom anywhere near as large in American politics as Israel does. So, we would not want to make bold pronouncements about how this will impact U.S. foreign relations, because we just don't know. However, we can point out that although South Africa has one-party rule, the ANC is pretty evenly divided between a Ramaphosa wing and a non-Ramaphosa wing. So, the general prediction is that he's going to have a tough time herding cats, and getting things done. This may be another storyline that is familiar to followers of American politics. Or British politics. Or French politics. Or Brazilian politics. Or Mexican politics. Or Israeli politics... (Z)