YESTERDAY the ANC ignored pressure from the left and announced that Planning Minister, Trevor Manuel, would be the boss of government’s new Planning Commission.
Cosatu and others have been calling for Manuel to be confined to barracks while the Economic Development Minister, Ebrahim Patel takes charge of financial planning.
Manuel was recently edged out of Cabinet’s economic cluster and it seemed he was on his way out. Now it seems that Zuma has decided to play both sides.
How sustainable is this and what will happen once the Planning Commission actually starts making plans? They are likely to be heavily contested within the ANC, perhaps even on the streets.

This from our story:
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said yesterday that party leaders had “agreed” that a commission would be established in terms of the agreements reached with Cosatu and the SACP at the last alliance summit, held last year.
“Everything that emerges now that is falling outside of what we agreed on [in] those important meetings of the alliance and the ANC are irrelevant.
“There will be a planning commission chaired by the minister in the presidency [and] it will be constituted by external experts. That is the model that we will have of the National Planning Commission.
“It is not new, it is what we had agreed, and we are not going to shift from that and do other things,” Mantashe said.
The decision to keep Manuel in the driving seat of the commission is likely to dominate the alliance summit, which runs from Friday to Sunday, with Cosatu and the SACP trying to overturn it.

Related posts:

1. Manuel will run government planning – ANC allies back down
2. Alliance Summit: Scene set for showdown over Manuel
3. Manuel vs the left – Is it a fight to the death?
4. Why the ANC, SACP and Cosatu alliance is a perversion of democracy
5. Bureaucracy advances on Manuel empire