In the last few hours, the political crisis has accelerated in Peru. President Castillo decreed the closing down of Congress, but was swiftly arrested by police. Congress voted to impeach him and proclaimed his vice president as the new president.

Just a week before the ANC’s 55th National Conference, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa is embroiled in a scandal involving the theft of huge sums of undisclosed foreign currency from his Phala Phala game farm in the Limpopo province. This scandal has deepened the factional fighting that has seen the ANC lurch from one crisis to the next for nearly two decades. At bottom though, this is part of a struggle within the ruling class for control of the party.