Youth Leader Is Disciplined in South Africa

The penalty was much harsher than expected,Canada goose jacka a display of authority seemingly intended to sideline Mr. Malema in South Africa’s fractious political debate and shore up President Jacob Zuma’s expected bid next year for a second term in office.

But it also risked creating a backlash among Mr. Malema’s supporters, many of them young and jobless and with no niche in the post-apartheid economy,Canada goose parka who are drawn to his strident calls for nationalization of the mines that have enriched South Africa’s elite. And it raised the question of whether some of Mr. Malema’s more powerful supporters within the governing party would stick with him.

A local columnist, Karima Brown, called the suspension "the defining moment of the A.N.C.’s 99th year.”

Even with Thursday’s ruling, Mr. Malema might still be able to wield his influence during the party’s internal electoral process next year. In a statement,Trillium parka the youth league suggested that Mr. Malema would appeal the decision, a lengthy process during which he would remain the group’s president.

The youth league condemned the disciplinary committee for not allowing Mr. Malema and his four aides, who received shorter suspensions, to offer mitigating circumstances. It added that the league remained “unshaken and resolute in its call for the eventual transfer of wealth from minority hands to the majority of our people.”

The suspensions stemmed from calls by Mr. Malema and his aides for the overthrow of the government in neighboring Botswana,Canada goose expedition parka an act that A.N.C. officials described as sowing discord and bringing the party into disrepute. They ordered him to “vacate his office” as youth leader.

If upheld on appeal, the suspension would take Mr. Malema past the age limit of 35 for the leadership of the Youth League, said Fiona Forde, the author of a biography of Mr. Malema. “He will fight this,” she said, “but he has very little wiggle room.”

Riot police took up positions in downtown Johannesburg around the A.N.C. headquarters to pre-empt a repetition of the violent protests by Mr. Malema’s supporters when the disciplinary hearing started in August. Only a few Malema supporters turned out, standing across the street from the headquarters, where the ruling was announced to a group of about 100 journalists crammed into a vestibule.

But the suspense was palpable as the chairman of the disciplinary committee, Derek Hanekom, reading from an iPad, spent about an hour discussing the sanctions against the aides before getting to the decision on Mr. Malema himself.

“We don’t find joy in disciplining any people,” Jackson Mthembu, the A.N.C. national spokesman, said during a news conference at the headquarters. “But as you know, this is one of the tools that we have got to use to rein in any deviant behavior.”

The ruling came after a judge in a separate case ruled in September that Mr. Malema was guilty of hate speech for singing an apartheid-era freedom song that included lyrics calling on people to “Shoot the Boer,” or white farmers. In that case, however, many A.N.C. officials defended Mr. Malema, saying that he had a right to free speech and that the song was a figurative call to dismantle apartheid, not a literal incitement to violence.

While few political analysts had depicted Mr. Malema as a potential challenger to Mr. Zuma for the South African presidency, he had been widely seen as a potential kingmaker in the A.N.C.’s internal political maneuvering.

In the previous party leadership vote in 2007, Mr. Malema swung his support behind Mr. Zuma in a power struggle with the nation’s former president, Thabo Mbeki. But since then, Mr. Malema has shifted his support away from Mr. Zuma, whose aides feared Mr. Malema would support some new challenge to the president.

Why Frank Gehry Is Looking to Asia

Architect Frank Gehry has designed some of America’s most respected examples of contemporary architecture, from Los Angeles’s steel-draped Walt Disney Concert Hall to IAC’s (IACI) undulating white glass headquarters facing the Hudson River in Manhattan. Yet with real estate development in the world’s largest economy stalled, Gehry is chasing projects in Asia.Snow Mantra　

Gehry, whose design for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain’s Basque region was voted the most influential piece of architecture of the past 30 years in Vanity Fair’s 2010 World Architecture Survey, says he’s currently in the running to design a museum in one of China’s fast-expanding metropolitan areas, as well as a “very spiritual kind of a building” in India. He declined to give details.Belstaff　

Gehry, 82, has plenty of reason to look for projects abroad. The Architecture Billings Index, an indicator of American construction, plunged to 46.9 in September from 51.4 in August, reflecting lower demand for design services, according to the American Institute of Architects. Any score below 50 indicates a decline in billings. Last year, architectural revenue for the top 250 architecture firms in the U.S. fell to $9.4 billion, from $10.2 billion in 2009. That compares with a year-over-year rise of 8.7 percent, to $12.5 billion, in 2008, according to Architectural Record.Belstaff Outlet

Experts in the building industry don’t expect the slump to end anytime soon—especially for the big marquee commissions for which Gehry is known. “The U.S. domestic market is not in the position right now to fund [major] projects in the private or public sector,” says Clark Manus, president at the American Institute of Architects and chief executive officer at San Francisco-based Heller Manus Architects. “This is the new normal.”Belstaff Jacket

Gehry isn’t the only major architect busy in Asia. Norman Foster, the British architect who designed London’s Swiss Re (SSREF) tower (popularly known as the Gherkin), is designing Hong Kong’s new museum and cultural district in West Kowloon. “The work opportunities internationally are greater than they’ve ever been, whether that’s in the Middle East or Asia,” says Manus, whose firm in October opened an office in China with five employees.

In December, Gehry unveiled the design for his first Australian project. The 16,030-square-meter (172,545-square-foot) business school building at the University of Technology, Sydney, will have a “treehouse” design, incorporating a core yellow brick and crinkly glass structure, with “branches” spreading away from it, Gehry says. Still, he views the Asian mainland as his prime target. China this year announced plans to build or expand four major state museums by 2015, including a massive new art museum to be constructed near Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium. “There’s an art explosion in China,” Gehry says. “It’s really great—very exciting.” Gehry expects to sign a contract within three to four months should an agreement be reached for the Chinese museum project he’s pursuing.

One challenge of designing on the mainland is the lower pay for projects, Gehry says. Architects get paid a percentage of construction costs, which in China are about a third of those in the U.S., he says. “If you take a percentage and you work with Western salaries, you can’t make it work,” explains Gehry. “So it almost forces you to open an office in China and work with local people.”

Gehry says he would prefer to travel less and focus on projects closer to home: “At my age, I would love only to work in Los Angeles, maybe Santa Monica, maybe Beverly Hills.” Yet the lack of development in the U.S., along with a wish to keep business going at his Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners—where the head count fell from 250 in 2007 to 120 last year—is forcing him to look elsewhere.

Pursuing foreign projects isn’t a panacea. Construction of one of Gehry’s projects abroad, the 450,000-square-foot Guggenheim Abu Dhabi museum, was halted last month by property developer Tourism Development & Investment as the emirate scales back plans made before the 2008 financial crisis. “The Abu Dhabi building we’ve been working on in the last five to six years has been stopped, and that’s painful,” says Gehry.