Democratic Capitalist

Would you rather have a smart president or a president who knew his limitations and opted rather to surround himself with smart people.

Barack Obama aside, I don’t think there are too many presidents or prime ministers who would qualify on an “intelligence” scale but I think the question is quite topical - particularly when you look at South Africa.

Let me take a step back - I was just looking through the local news sites and I see that Jacob Zuma’s daughter had a R400000 birthday bash up at Inanda last night… Now obviously I don’t have a huge amount of trust for what is written in the papers but it did make for interesting reading.

I thought this was quite interesting considering that a big part of the corruption case was centred around Schabir Schaik constantly having to transfer money into JZ’s account to help him make payments on things.

Obviously JZ is surrounded by many people to whom R400k is chump change so the amount and the birthday party itself don’t interest me… and no I highly doubt the money came out of taxpayers pockets.

So by Zuma’s mates own admission, he’s not great with money and yet this is the guy who is expected to negotiate South Africa through the current financial and economic crisis and the social problems that come with it…

… yet despite his own “short-comings” - on which I can’t really comment and have to take Shaiks comments at face value - he is well respected by the SA business community. \

Almost every investment strategist (at the top banking and financial services groups in South Africa) that I have spoken to believe Zuma’s best asset is that he surrounds himself with some very sharp minds - finance, trade and labour.

Maybe its a sign of good leadership to be able to defer to people smarter and more successful - even if you are president of the country. So what asset makes a good president?

And more specifically what assets make for a good SOUTH AFRICAN president?