The Optimist's Guide To 2017

With the right leaders, and economic reforms, South Africa could get back on a steady growth path in 2017. At the same time, the potential boost to the US economy by promised increased infrastructure spend in that country under president-elect Donald Trump is expected to trickle down to other economies. And some experts say the bull market will remain for some time. In fact, in this optimist’s guide to 2017, even the Springboks could be heading for a win again.

- Natalie Greve

With scandal-hit Jacob Zuma likely to exit as president of the ruling ANC at the party’s elective conference in December 2017, debates around his potential party and state successor continue to gather momentum as the country envisages a Zuma free political future.

Like many of his contemporaries,associate professor of politics at Wits University, Daryl Glaser, believes Zuma’s political power will begin to dwindle following the elective conference, at which the party will usher in a new, less publicly mired party leader.

“My basic feeling now is that nothing momentous is going to happen between now and the 2017 elective [conference]. Zuma has managed to survive the severest of attacks and nothing else between now and December presents itself obviously as another pretext for an attempt to get rid of him.

“Certainly legal cases will play themselves out, but Zuma is a master of legal delay and it’s proven very difficult to nail him legally. I think he will become legally weak at some point but probably not before December,” Glaser tells finweek.

Zuma’s vulnerability will likely be most evident between the ANC elective conference and the 2019 national elections, when the new ANC leader will almost certainly be put forward as the party’s presidential candidate.

“During this period, there will be two centres of power in the party, and I suspect if there is any move to recall Zuma [as president of the country] during this period he would have good advance warning,” Glaser notes.

Modernist emergence