Mail & Guardian reports that axed finance minister Nhlanhla Nene had refused to buckle to pressure from SAA chairwoman Dudu Myeni and Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir - wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes - to open a new air route between SA and Khartoum.

As the rand breached R16 to the US dollar and overseas traders calling the rand a one way bet to R18 or even R20, it's clear South Africa can no longer afford its president and his capricious style of rule. His firing of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene may be the last straw.

President Zuma fired finance minister and the rand slipped past R15 to the US dollar. What else could possibly go wrong? All bets are off at this stage, but a yearend shock for the rand - as if R15 to the US dollar is not enough of a shock - is certainly now on the table.

South Africans' confidence in the state is melting away, as shown by rising service protests, lower voter turnout and surveys which show the majority of people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

President Jacob Zuma is unschooled in economics and could care less. This shows in his selection of ministers who send wildly conflicting messages about how to grow the economy - from nuclear power stations to banning cigarette branding and mining. It's all a horrible mess.

My Vote Counts questions whether a recent tender won by a company controlled by the Gupta family to supply coal to Eskom is payback for political favours rendered to the ANC. The Gupta family is well known as a major source of funding for the ANC.  

Rian Malan reviews RW Johnson's book, How Long Will South Africa Survive: The Looming Crisis. Johnson first published this book in 1977, predicting that economic and moral pressure would defeat apartheid, not the ANC's armed struggle. Turns out he was dead right. Will he be right this time with his dire prediction for SA?

South Africans hope that a change in leadership of the ANC or a miraculous act of reform with reverse the downward trajectory of the country. RW Johnson, author and Emeritus Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, explains why this will not happen.

Is government finally waking up to the policy mess it has created in sectors such as mining and tourism?  Frans Cronje, CEO of the SA Institute of Race Relations, believes there is a glimmer of hope that may prevent the country sliding into the worst possible outcome - what he calls the rocky road. 

While the media and public obsess over Nkandla, whether Cyril Ramaphosa will be the next president of SA and other issues, the country faces a far deeper crisis - massive youth unemployment being just one of them, according to political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi.

Politicians are not renowned for eloquence or truth telling, but recent statements from ANC luminaries are pure drivel. Like Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi blaming "neo-liberalism" for his ministry's cock-ups, or ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe telling mining companies not to lay off workers just because they can't afford to keep them.

Mmusi Maimane, 34, was chosen as the new leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance over the weekend following former leader Helen Zille's decision to step down. Maimane has made it clear he intends to make a strong bid for the urban black vote by appealing to their concerns, and the fact that race remains a factor in SA politics, according to Polity.org.

The question being asked by the media this week was: who jammed the cell phone signals during last week's chaos in Parliament, and on whose authority. Whoever it was operated under the misguided belief they could do as they please. 

The draft Land Holdings Bill is due to come before Parliament. It will prevent foreigners from owning land in SA, restricting them to long-term leases rather than outright ownership of land, and no more than 12,000 hectares.

The riotous events in Parliament this week as President Jacob Zuma attempted to give his State of the Nation address points to the magnitude of the problem facing the ANC. That problem points straight back to Zuma, argues Vukani Mde.

Questions are now being asked as to whether President Jacob Zuma can survive the latest claims that he and the ANC received bribes from Frnech arms firm Thales in 2000. There are rumblings within the ANC that his presidency is a danger to the party's electoral hopes in 2016.

The US government is living in a web of self-deception if it thinks that its waning global power has gone unnoticed in the East. Russia, China and Iran are formulating a new global order that will see the US and its allies increasingly isolated and economically marginalised, writes Seyed Mohammad Marandi in Al Jazeera.

The latest election results show the Western Cape is all but lost to the ANC. But the ruling party came perilously close to losing Johannesburg and Tshwane. Now the game is on to wrest Gauteng - South Africa's economic heartland - from the ANC in the 2016 local elections.

Despite the fact that the Democratic Alliance got more than three quarters of a million black votes, the latest election results show that South Africans continue to vote along racial lines.

President Zuma's days are numbered if the ANC fails to win 60% of the popular vote in the upcoming elections. Opinion polls show the ruling party is doing better than it was six months ago, when it looked like they would win just 56% of the vote.

The SA Institute for Race Relations recently published a 12 point plan for a better SA. It was accused of casting pearls before swine. Maybe. But the same was said of its policy advices to the apartheid government, which eventually implemented most of the Institute's recommendations.

Simon Jenkins argues that the West was inept in its attempt to rope Ukraine into its orbit, and is now facing the consequences of its actions. For Russian President Putin, there is no going back. Crimea will from here on form part of Russia.

Opposition MPs have threatened to launch impeachment proceedings against President Zuma should the Public Protectors report reveal misuse of public funds over the R230 million spent on the president's palace at Nkandla.

At least five candidates appearing on the ANC election list left office under a cloud, face criminal charges or have been accused of maladministration. 

All political parties in South Africa should be worried over the findings of a recent survey that nearly half the country is disillusioned with politics and a quarter had no intention of voting in the up-coming elections.