the corner office

I would say good riddance, if it wasn't for who's going to replace him. Thabo Mbeki is out, and Jacob Zuma is undoubtedly in.

There is a good article in the M&G about many people's views on Zuma's corruption charges being thrown out of court by Judge Chris Nicholson:

Let us be honest about this: many, many of us, believing that Jacob Zuma is a demonstrably inappropriate person to run the country and, knowing that the available political processes aren't likely to stop him, want the courts to spare us from him.

The more credible version of this thinking goes that the interests of justice would be served by the rigorous trial of a powerful man against whom evidence of corruption is stacked up thousands of pages high, and that South Africa needs to be shown that such men are not rewarded with high office. It is as hard to argue with that proposition as it is to agree with the blunter version: that he must simply be got rid of and the courts are the only remaining instrument that can achieve it.

But all of us have to admit that we hoped the criminal justice system would achieve what other organs of our young and flawed democracy cannot -- to save the country from its own worst tendencies.

In other words, many people have little faith in South Africa's democracy, and Zuma's ascendancy and Mbeki's fall from grace causes it to weaken further. At the same time, it suggests that within the ranks of the ANC, democracy is still strong. It's not a pretty picture for 'public' democracy, with voting against our de facto one-party state being little more than symbolic, but the real horror story would have been if the majority of ANC members wanted Mbeki out but couldn't get rid of him.

The real question is whether the ANC's internal democracy will be as successful in giving Zuma the boot in a few years' time, if he doesn't deliver, and just how bad things will become before that happens.