Appointment of third South African finance minister in a week leaves Zuma's future in doubt

Can the President survive? That is a serious question being posed by serious people in South Africa. And some answer in the negative.

Jacob Zuma’s potentially fatal wounds are entirely self-inflected. With one act he has seemed to confirm to his critics their central charge against his administration; that it is both corrupt and incompetent.

Last week Zuma fired without giving good reason his well respected finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, and replaced him with a total unknown.

The new man was widely seen as a compliant loyalist rapidly promoted to do the President’s bidding. Nene, by contrast, is said to have opposed a vastly expensive nuclear power deal and an equally controversial rescue package for the national airline.

The markets went crazy; the rand fell off a cliff. Billions were wiped off the value of an economy already in dire straits.

Late last night, Zuma was forced into a humiliating U-turn with a third finance minister appointed in four days.

Pravin Gordhan has done the job before and his re-emergence has restored some calm to the markets.

But it hasn’t stemmed the outpouring of anger.

The radio phone-in shows are crowded with callers demanding Zuma’s head. A few ANC veterans of the liberation struggle have joined the chorus.

The opposition Democrat Alliance has accused the President of playing Russian roulette with South Africa’s economy.

Even Zuma’s fiercest opponents concede that at heart his concern for South Africa’s poor is sincere.

But the failing economy and falling rand has hit both sides of this nation’s dramatically defined wealth divide. Higher food prices for the impoverished millions; reduced spending power for the middle classes, black and white.

There’s been much talk on social media of a mass march on government buildings in Pretoria; and open speculation as to whether the ANC might ditch their leader.

The ANC has remained, by and large, silent. In public at least. Behind the scenes, who knows?

But an internal party coup would be a drastic move; perhaps still less than likely. But next year there are local elections. More and more, the party that led this nation proudly out of apartheid is less of an inspiration to its people, and more a source of disillusionment.

Rightly or wrongly, many have concluded that the rot starts at the top.