Traversing the Zuma, Onochie, Haiti route

Jacob Zuma has a new home and it’s not in his posh mansion in Nkandla. He now has an abode at the Estcourt in Kwazulu Natal province. His new dress code is no longer a suit with or without a tie, but an orange jumpsuit, the uniform of vaguely important prisoners, VIPs. According to the best of lawyers, except he gets a pardon, he would remain there for at least four months with good conduct, but his sentence is 15 months.

Some have said the sentence is higher than the crime, because this initial sentence is not for his alleged crimes of corruption, but for contempt of court. Needless to say that Zuma disappointed an army of ethnic supporters who thronged his base to encourage him to exercise his right to disobey another lawful court order – to serve imprisonment. They rushed into town, some dressed in the unenviable colour of poverty, holding traditional instruments of war and chanting defiant songs.

But Zuma is wiser, like Nicodemus of yore, Zuma sneaked into a police station at night, introduced himself as a criminal, was processed and then escorted to jail just hours before he could have been hounded like a common criminal.

Zuma’s road to the slammer is as epic as his rise to fame, fortune and power. In 2017, he set up a panel to investigate the government he headed following accusations that he traded South Africa’s hard-won sovereignty to the mercurial Gupta family who then garlanded it in the rainbow colours of corruption. Perhaps Zuma did not think much of it, just another African kangaroo court set up to waste precious times and declare polemics instead of rulings.

If that was his thought, he was wrong, the judges took their oath of office seriously and summoned him to appear several times. Initially, he did appear but he also walked out a couple of times before later ignoring the summons. It was that refusal that brought him to this trouble. The judges found him guilty of contempt thereby reinforcing the concept of equality before the law.

In Nigeria, the judges would have bowed to the fact that he has immunity as a former president. This is not a presumption. General Muhammadu Buhari (as he then was) had refused to appear before the Oputa Panel. That did not stop him from getting his party’s nomination after three futile attempts.

Talk about his moral right to pursue charges against people he now thinks are enemies of state.

Buhari’s supporters should be gladdened that Zuma’s kinsfolks tried to rally against the rule of law, since all they know in our clime is the ruse of law. In Africa, cult worship has led Stockholm Syndrome victims to take the sides of those responsible for their eternal woes. Apparently, as long as the corruption that the Zuma era inflicted on his nation was wreaked by one of their own, it was excusable and needed not to be remedied. If you are new to this kind of reasoning, then you have not been following African, or black man’s history. Ask the man on the street – a homeboy criminal is always preferable to an outside one.

In Nigeria, the giant of Africa, a fugitive wanted by British law wiped off his records, campaigned and won elections as governor. In government house, he instituted corruption as state policy until he was extradited from Dubai to face charges and to serve his term. Yet, he has returned home as a hero and a kingmaker. In Nigeria, an accused in jail won an election into the Senate and became a distinguished lawmaker. His trial then stalled and he had the audacity to run a pretty successful governorship race!

A former finance minister who used a fraudulent National Youth Service Corps discharge certificate to get nomination into cabinet is gloating over her victory in court. She had approached the seat of justice-seeking an interpretation as to whether a national service discharge certificate is required to serve the nation. The court ruled that it was not mandatory. Then she went to town saying her fraud has been vindicated and that she is now a saint. Some of her kinsfolks want her returned to office!

There is more from where all these comparisons came. The Buhari government is known to take sides with those who the electorate loathe. When the president selected one of his most unctuous aides to sit on the ‘independent’ body that oversees our elections, most of us thought it was a joke and laughed. At worst, we reasoned, it was a smart way to get rid of a loudmouth whose unquestioned loyalty and willingness to go to the deepest recess of the gutter to defend every policy has finally been dumped.

Apparently, our president loves the odious and the odoriferous and in the quest to keep them close, there appears to be no institution too sacred to desecrate. He rubs it in our noses daily and taunts us with it. If anyone as much as winced, his bigoted ethno-religious army of jackals are ever at the ready, snarling, barking and baying for blood.

Last week, Lauretta Onochie sat before cameras and a rubberstamp legislature for screening. For dramatic reasons, she was not sworn in on the ‘bow and go’ and we must thank our stars for that. Without scruples, she blatantly lied to reconstruct herself. She told the nation how she had burnt her political identity and even invested a futuristic title – Madam Due Process. Oby Ezekwesili must be squirming in her seat!

By design, a legislature stands behind the electorate to checkmate the excesses of the executive. In Nigeria, the legislature is in cahoots with the executive to ride roughshod on the people. It needs the cooperation with the executive to benefit from the spoils of office and unquestioned access to the national patrimony.

When it comes to getting Onochie cleared as an electoral umpire, the wish of the electorate does not matter. The APC card-carrying member would take her seat as a ‘impartial umpire’ delivering free, fair and credible elections for Nigeria. That is, should Buhari decide to hold one in the next two years. If Buhari decides to sit still, he’ll have Onochie at the forefront convincing the world that it is the best thing that could happen to a democracy. If the numbers don’t add up, she’ll be blaming the rest of us for our lack of basic rules of additional mathematics.

If you’re a black person, there is no hope for you on this planet. Or tell me where a black man could go to escape the litany of woes that befalls our race? Africa is a basket case, having everything, yet lacking the most basic of things. Our diaspora sibling-nations are no better.

Take Haiti for instance. That nation has gone through a lot - a dump for people violently uprooted from their African homes, culture and language. They have witnessed instability, from the murderous dictatorship of Papa Doc and his Tonton Macoute to the rule of his son, Baby Doc; from inclement weather brewing devastating earthquakes, to hurricanes and strong gale winds and violence that beat reason or rationalisation. Haiti has endured it all.

Last week, Jovenel Moise, the last of the nation’s presidents was assassinated in his home by mercenaries. If he had not invented his own way of counting when his presidency began, he could have escaped the assassin’s bullet. Under Moise, even Haiti’s capital, Port au Prince was divided between rival warlords. Like Buhari’s Nigeria, kidnappers ran riot. Moise sat through it all, egged on by a cult of his own supporters until the gunmen came for him. For the umpteenth time, Haiti’s future is bleaked in uncertainly.