Africa at a Glance: What Lula’s victory means for BRICS and South Africa

What is the constitutional sort of directive in Brazil for presidency? Most countries will say that you're not allowed to have more than two terms in the presidency.

Where does Brazil stand as far as that is concerned?

Brazil has got an interesting system where it says that you can serve two consecutive terms.

And then you can't go beyond that, which is the practice in most countries.

In South Africa, the same applies.

Two consecutive terms, that's it.

But what it also then says, like in Russia and many other countries, it says that if you then sit out for five years, you can then come back and contest.

And this is what Lula has done.

You know, he served his two terms.

It came to an end here.

He was defeated by Baltanero, he left, and because Baltanero served a particular period, he then decided to come back into politics, even though he was already quite old, and defeated Baltanero, the father, not Flavio.

And now that he's going for a second term, which is allowed constitutionally, Flavio is challenging him, won the first round, everyone is excited, seems Lula is coming to an end.

Unfortunately, he proved them otherwise.

He won the second round, which then means that come January 25th next year, he's serving another term as president

of Brazil.

So that's sort of the arrangement.

And this is also why, by the way, just to clarify, this is why the likes of Buchanan and others are saying that Trump is coming back for another term because they're actually playing with the Constitution of the United States, which says that technically he did not serve two consecutive terms.

He was there for five years.

He got defeated.

Then he came back and he served another five years, which technically means they argue, I don't say I agree, that he can serve another five years.

Of course, we all know that's not going to happen come the midterm elections in November, is going to be defeated, I say, in both houses, both Congress and the Senate, and there will be impeachment proceedings against him fairly soon in the new year.

That argument would probably be true for Barack Obama, I imagine, that he, too, can run for another term of office, given the fact that he's had that cooling-off period.

I see that he's quite vocal, he's quite active at the moment.

Absolutely.

I mean, he could come back and serve another two terms.