Really, as President, Zuma hasn’t yet done anything that I would particularly object to. I have to rate him higher than Mbeki if just for the change in HIV/AIDS policy. I agree that he seems more grounded; perhaps he’s a little bit too populist for my taste, but in balance I think it’s better than Mbeki’s “ivory tower” attitude. Zuma does seem to give at least the appearance of caring about what’s happing to the “man in the street” - although of course it could all be PR spin.
One issue that I have had is with the proliferation of portfolios in the Cabinet. I’m not sure if there was a need for all the new ministries; it may be that there really was too much workload, but there does seem to be a bit of a “too many cooks” situation. When you have separate ministers for Finance, Economic Development, National Planning, and Trade & Industry, how do you divide up the responsibilities?
The ANC is quite a “big tent” and a lot of the policy debate goes on within the party rather than in public. In the long run I think that’s a bad thing, and it’s been interesting to see that more of the disputes within the ANC (and the Tripartite Alliance) have been aired in public recently. I was hoping the the formation of COPE might have been a legitimate split in the ANC, but it seems that the leaders of COPE have sunk it by their infighting, and by their platform of “Look how bad the ANC has been in government! We’d be better than that! (Never mind that we were in the ANC government until last year.)”
It’s been encouraging to see that, since the DA took control of the Western Cape provincial government in last year’s elections, the relationship with the national government has been reasonably smooth - not that there haven’t been issues, but from what both sides are saying they seem to actually be able to work somewhat amicably together.