Prof. William Gumede: Blueprint to reset SA

South Africa needs a new generation of leaders - maybe a non-politician to run the country. That is the view of Professor William Gumede of the School of Governance at Wits University. “I think…that maybe we need less of the hard people…a lot of our leaders, our political leaders, many of our black political leaders particularly, these are hard individuals, ruthless individuals, self-interested individuals, people who…don't care about inciting violence and dividing the country, blaming other communities. They will walk over the bodies of black and white South Africans to be in power,” he says. In this wide-ranging interview with BizNews, Professor Gumede dissects the Trump-Ramaphosa meeting in Washington; the performance of the Government of National Unity (GNU), as well as the Democratic Alliance (DA), Patriotic Alliance (PA), and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) - and their future prospects. He also outlines the possible strategy of former President Jacob Zuma with his MKP. He delves into the Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC) controversy, and suggests alternatives to current Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) practices. Meanwhile, Professor Gumede is working from the outside to “try to get all of these opposition parties with a constitutional base…to cooperate…to sort of nudge people and politicians to begin to realign our politics to a much more reason-based, common sense-based centre”. He says the country needs “at least a bridging period, a five-year period in South Africa's history for the country to calm down, for the country to be much more pragmatic, and for us to be more inclusive and to get the populists to the sidelines, the people who think that only one colour can run the country or only one political faction and one ideology can run the country.”