Richard Calland

He has a gentle face and an engaging smile; the Americans like to call him names. First he was branded a "communist", then a "drug trafficker". But nowadays it’s the more elevated "narcoterrorist".

Even the resignations are carefully controlled. When Robin Cook resigned as leader of the British House of Commons last month on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, it was the first big resignation from a Labour Cabinet since the party swept to power in 1997. It also represented Prime Minister Tony Blair’s most perilous political moment.

Justice Albie Sachs will be missed when his term at the Constitutional Court comes to an end next year. Indeed, September 2009 will be a very important milestone for the court. Along with Sachs, three others of the original court that was appointed late in 1994 will move on.

South Africa has entered a period that can be characterised as a “Second Transition”. It lacks the grand narrative of the first and the international spotlight is not as intense. There are political, institutional and constitutional implications to this Second Transition.

The international financial system is in turmoil. The world is heading for a big fat recession. Developing economies, already vulnerable to global shocks such as sharp oil price hikes, will likely catch the proverbial cold. Widespread power failures are shutting down South African cities and industries.

Our political culture remains decidedly short of real satire; surely it is a test of the robustness of a democracy: if it can’t take the humorous hits, our political leadership is hardly likely to be willing to answer the difficult questions. Jacob Zuma has sued Zapiro, the cartoonist: What does this tell us about his attitude to public accountability?

Columnists should generally resist the temptation to write about themselves. Unless purely comic, the column that begins "I want to tell you about my awful experience on the Guava Fruit Airline the other day" is a self-indulgent expropriation of a public space. But writing about the organisation that one has been employed by for 12 years is I hope forgiveable, especially if it seeks to make a broader point.

These are confusing times for freedom of expression. A national conversation is emerging, but it is as incoherent as it is at times immature. Both the government and the media are searching for a bit more nuance in their positions. Last weekend’s Cape Town Book Fair was a resounding celebration of both literary and intellectual freedom and endeavour.

Most opposition leaders can enjoy the luxury of opposition: they can promise the world, free of the responsibility to deliver it. The new leader of the DA, Helen Zille, is in an unusual position. Wisely, she has decided to remain mayor of Cape Town. She is betting that the opportunity to match words with deeds outweighs the risk that her term as mayor will expose her utterances for empty rhetoric.

It’s a big year for elections — and pre-elections — from Africa to Europe and the United States. France creaks at the seams, yet Nicolas Sarkozy, the French mirror to George W Bush’s neocon agenda and the man most likely to fan the flames of social unrest, leads the opinion polls ahead of the April 21 ballot.

So dominant are Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that it is easy to forget New Labour’s forefather — Neil Kinnock, party leader from 1983 to 1992. As South Africa faced its emergency in 1987, Kinnock pulled the British Labour Party back from its own abyss. It had just lost its third election to Margaret Thatcher and would lose one more to the Tories, in 1992, in an agonisingly close campaign.

Is it arrogance, complacency, fecklessness, dishonesty, disingenuousness or self-delusion that leads the ANC to insult our intelligence with its defence of the Progressive Business Forum (PBF)? Or a dismal combination of all of the above, asks Richard Calland.

Credit where it is due: one ‘c’ was better than none. Thabo Mbeki’s third-last State of the Nation speech passed the “crime test”, but failed the corruption one. As an avid reader of the <i>Financial Times</i> himself, Mbeki would have noted that the influential newspaper led page 2 last Saturday with the story that the South African president had responded to pressure to speak strongly on the threat of crime.

As Quentin Crisp once remarked, rather than being the art of the possible, politics is actually the art of making the inevitable seem planned. So it was that Tony Leon’s announcement that he will soon retire as leader of the Democratic Alliance surprised only those people still hanging on to the forlorn hope that he might one day lead his party into the Union Buildings.

If it can reasonably be defined as a political philosophy or rhetorical brand that sticks up for the common person against the elite, why is it that “populism” is so widely denigrated? When American liberals speak of Hugo Chávez as a populist, it is not a term of endearment.

<i>Pity the Nation</i>. The title of veteran Middle East reporter Robert Fisk’s seminal 1990 book, subtitled <i>Lebanon at War</i>, is resonant again. After a difficult period of reconstruction — having finally attracted a steady flow of export business and tourism, and having rebuilt its infrastructure and social cohesion — Lebanon once again looks into the abyss.

We should have been celebrating the 10year anniversary of an extraordinary document, the Constitution. Instead, we were all glued to the television or radio. Inevitably, the verdict totally eclipsed the anniversary; Jacob Zuma stole the show — an exquisitely painful irony, yet also strangely apt.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he will depart from 10 Downing Street before the next election, which must be no later than 2010. He has an ambitious, well-qualified and long-serving minister of finance waiting impatiently for him to go. Sound familiar?

The visit to South Africa by Evo Morales, the recently elected President of Bolivia, was an evocative reminder of the spirit of 1994. He came looking for solidarity, ideas and concrete assistance for the future. He left with all three. He will need all three. Morales is the first indigenous president in a country where a largely white elite has hitherto enjoyed an oligopoly of political and economic power.

The tribute to Brett Kebble by Khanyo Gqulu last week ("Our north, our south, our east and west") would have been the most delicious piece of satire had it not been offered in such apparently deadly earnest. It — along with the rest of the sickly tributes to Kebble over the past 10 days — illustrates at least two things about the new South Africa.

Students of European soccer will know that at midnight this week Wednesday, the transfer window closes until Christmas. The rumours and counter-rumours, the hyperbole and avarice of player’ agents, the acquisitive hopes and dreams of the coaches and club supporters will cease.

The public protector’s report on Oilgate is a dismal, depressing, disingenuous display of intellectual dishonesty. First and foremost, the public protector has taken an absurdly literal and narrow view of the distinction between public and private. As the report is at pains to point out, the public protector’s statutory duty is to investigate maladministration in public office.