Politics.za

In recent US history, the easiest way to become president was first to become governor of a state. George W. Bush was governor of Texas, Clinton of Arkansas, Regan of California and Carter of Georgia.

In SA we have not had a long enough period of democratic rule to extrapolate any kind of trend of who will be president, but one thing that has been a recurring theme is that the Premier of Gauteng has always been mentioned as a presidential contender. When Tokyo Sexwale was premier under the Mandela administration there was a lot of chatter about him being the next president. That he was forced out of politics, supposedly thanks to Mbeki, before any of the chatter could become reality is an indication of the prestige and weight the position holds.

So while reading through this article about current Premier of Gauteng Mbhazima Shilowa’s speech at the opening of the provincial legislature I couldn’t help but wondering if we have another stealth presidential candidate in the making. The speech seemed to be everything that people wanted out of Mbeki’s opening speech at parliament. A new focus on combating crime (R600 million for the 10111 emergency system alone – which seems a bit much to me), focusing on underperforming schools, a planned 60% increase in the number of HIV+ sufferers on anti-retrovirals – what’s not to like?

Shilowa has kept his head down and quiet over the whole Mbeki/Zuma struggle, hasn’t been involved in any political scandals that I’m aware of and to top it all off he’s got lots of cred with the various left wing factions thanks to his past leadership of COSATU. The only black mark I can put against his name is the Gautrain which is still in my opinion the wrong approach to take to reduce congestion and traffic but at least there’s the possibility of something cool coming out of the whole process.

Now of course this is all speculation on my part so take it all with a grain of salt but if he is playing the quiet under the radar game then he’s playing it very well.There’s still a few months to the ANC congress and I really do hope we start getting a better idea of who the potential candidates are in the near future.

GAUTENG premier Mbhazima Shilowa yesterday gave one of the strongest undertakings from a senior government leader to address the high crime rate as he unveiled a number of crime-fighting initiatives.

The province, which has taken a strong stance on a number of issues, including HIV, was the first to make public its crime-fighting initiatives, following criticism of President Thabo Mbeki’s and government’s alleged failure to deal effectively with crime.