SAME OLD ZUMA
He’s using his usual slash-and-burn tactics to undermine another institution
My admiration for Jacob Zuma grows by leaps and bounds. I have said this before, and I will say it again from the rooftops: with Zuma you can never say you were not warned.
He has been attacking the institutions that support our democracy since the early 2000s and he isn’t stopping now. The public protector, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the Scorpions, the South African Revenue Service, the Constitutional Court, and even the Commission for Gender Equality have come under fire from Zuma and his cronies. He attacked, undermined, and attempted to capture all these institutions so he could avoid jail.
The noose is tightening around his neck, and he is now playing his desperate final card. The only way he can escape his corruption trial is to sow anarchy in the land, and to do that he has to undermine the one institution whose collapse could totally delegitimise the country and spark national riots. That institution is the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). Zuma and his cronies are now gunning for the IEC with the single-mindedness, precision, gusto and consistency for which he is notorious.
The ANC has taken the IEC to court for registering Zuma’s MK Party with a name and logo resembling that of Umkhonto we Sizwe. The MK Party has responded with threats of violence against the IEC and the country.
“If they [the IEC] remove the MK Party and President Zuma from the ballot as the face of the campaign and try to take our rights, there won’t be elections in South Africa,” MK Party Youth League leader Bonginkosi Khanyile said last week.
And in a viral video clip, the MK Party’s KwaZulu Natal leader, Visvin Reddy, said: “We are sending a loud and clear message that if these courts, which are sometimes captured, try to stop the MK there will be anarchy in this country. There will be riots that have never been seen in this country. No South African will go to polls if MK is not on the ballot.”
Without the IEC there are no elections. Without elections there isn’t government. In this vacuum, the Zumas of this world reign. That is the chaos Zuma seeks.
When Zuma wanted the corruption charges he faced in the mid-2000s to be quashed, he went for the NPA and its investigative arm, the Scorpions. He ruthlessly got rid of the Scorpions and had his lackeys accuse Bulelani Ngcuka, head of the NPA at the time, of being an apartheid spy.
When those false charges did not stick he got rid of the prosecutor in the case by leaking audio of the man and Ngcuka speaking to each other about the case. The man who allegedly leaked those tapes was Arthur Fraser, the spy boss who was to later spring Zuma from jail in 2021, and who “exposed” the theft of foreign currency from Cyril Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm. After the departure of Ngcuka at the NPA, Zuma installed his own lackeys at the prosecuting authority, thus ensuring that he would be shielded from prosecution.
When aspects of his attempt to get the same corruption charges quashed came before the Constitutional Court, judge John Hlophe approached key members of the court and told them he was relying on them to “do the right thing”.
When then public protector Thuli Madonsela found malfeasance and corruption in the building of his Nkandla “firepool” palace, he ensured that her replacement was another lackey of his who proved to be so incompetent that she was impeached last year. She promptly joined the EFF, a party Zuma is flirting with.
When the Special Investigating Unit was praised for doing excellent anti-corruption work under Willie Hofmeyr back in 2011, Zuma replaced Hofmeyr with a known ally of his own.
Now we have a rash of Zuma’s acolytes attacking the IEC. They know Zuma cannot be president (because of his conviction and 15-month jail sentence, and he has served his maximum two terms as president), but that doesn’t matter. The institution must fall. That has been Zuma’s modus operandi all along, and that’s his final gamble today.
The greatest danger is that the ANC has let him get away with this tactic in the past. With the ANC faced with loss of power this time around, what guarantee do we have that it will not make a deal and bring Zuma back into its tent?