Zuma rules with money and abandon
• President’s traditionalist approach, coupled with corruption, has spawned a revolving cabal of loyalists
SA is fast approaching a political turning point. This will be determined by the outcome of the struggle for power between two main factions within the ANC that I describe as the Traditionalists and the Reformers.
This struggle will come to a head in December, when the party elects its leadership during the ANC’s conference.
SA is a laggard in a region that is expected to be among the most rapidly growing in the world, and it also lags its upper middle-income peers globally.
When the government is absent, distracted or incompetent, other actors move in to fill the void and new political dynamics emerge.
The 2019 elections will probably reveal further reductions in electoral support for the ANC and gains for opposition parties, unless the ruling party can pull a very large rabbit out of the hat.
The government is being “tested by mounting demands, but falls short in its response”, said the Human Sciences Research Council in its 2016 State of the Nation report.
A growing protest movement is calling for change across the areas of service provision, labour issues, unemployment, university fees and staffing as well as for President Jacob Zuma’s resignation.
There is no doubt that Zuma has become a liability to the ANC as a result of his unashamed efforts at state capture, unethical behaviour, poor decision making and his dependence on the largesse of others – first businessman Schabir Shaik and now Gupta brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh. His personal choices, inability to manage his finances and use of state resources for private gain have sullied the reputation of the country, the Presidency and the governing party.
Beyond his role in helping to bring peace to KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s main political success ahead of his bid to oust Thabo Mbeki was to turn that province into an ANC stronghold.
He did this by striking a deal with traditional leaders over land, which swung most of them away from the Inkatha Freedom Party to the ANC ahead of the 2004 general election.
LAND RIGHTS
“This came at the cost of genuine land reform and entrenched rather than dismantled apartheid-era divisions over land rights and ownership,” argues Nick Branson of the Africa Research Institute.
Beyond that double-edged achievement, the president maintains an indifference to economic policy and a disdain for investor predictability and the need for policy stability. His vernacular pronouncements to an exclusively ANC audience point to a lack of conviction in the constitutional democratic project, such as the statement that he could solve all of SA’s problems if made a dictator for six months.
The rule of law, good governance and the effectiveness of systems have suffered at his hands. He clearly desires a very different type of society from the one reflected in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, preferring traditional ‘big-man’ rule.
Zuma acts like a traditional chief who is not bound by considerations of due process, the Bill of Rights or the constraints of an international economy that punishes countries that live beyond their means.
Accelerating a trend first evident under Mbeki, Zuma has undermined, or tried to damage, the integrity and effectiveness of institutions such as the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the Constitutional Court, the office of the public protector, the South African Revenue Service (SARS), the Treasury and the media.
Under Zuma, all have been subjected to unprecedented levels of political interference as part of the ANC policy of cadre deployment. Recent disclosures have revealed a much grander effort at state capture.
Originally, the most wellknown were ventilated in the High Court in Pretoria, which found in April 2016 that the NPA’s 2009 decision to drop 783 charges of fraud, racketeering and corruption against the president was irrational. This decision opened the door to Zuma’s prosecution by the NPA.
Zuma and the NPA subsequently announced they would appeal against the decision in a clear effort to continue to kick this can as far down the road as is legally possible. The obstacles to prosecution have steadily been peeled away and the case may proceed towards the latter part of 2017.
FACTIONAL BATTLES
That the NPA has been subjected to manipulation and interference is public knowledge. The national director of public prosecutions is appointed by the president for a 10-year term but none has been able to complete a term because of corruption and factional battles.
Shortly after the incumbent, Shaun Abrahams, was appointed, he launched a campaign to charge the then newly appointed minister of finance and prominent member of the Reformist faction, Pravin Gordhan, for having established a rogue spy unit during his tenure at SARS.
When Gordhan did not blink, Abrahams dropped the charges for lack of evidence. Abrahams is the latest in a long list of Zuma appointees to the criminal justice system. It would appear each NPA director is appointed by the president to serve a particular political purpose, and not for his or her competence.
When fulfilling the role proves legally difficult or when the incumbent seeks to pursue prosecutions too close to presidential comfort, such as charging Zuma on the spy tapes, every legal loophole is exhausted — often at the expense of the taxpayer — and eventually, the incumbent finds himself in hot water.
Abrahams was unable to pursue the charges against Gordhan, who was proving to be an obstacle to access to lucrative contracts linked to a proposed new nuclear power build and deals relating to South African Airways and others.
Losing power steadily, Zuma may still survive.
Corruption and patronage have compromised the strength of many of SA’s justice and lawenforcement institutions. To an extent, Zuma is following in the footsteps of his predecessor.
In 1999, Mbeki decided to appoint diplomat and struggle veteran Jackie Selebi as national police commissioner despite his lack of policing experience.
ZUMA ACTS LIKE A TRADITIONAL CHIEF WHO IS NOT BOUND BY CONSIDERATIONS OF DUE PROCESS OR THE BILL OF RIGHTS CORRUPTION AND PATRONAGE HAVE COMPROMISED THE STRENGTH OF MANY JUSTICE AND LAW INSTITUTIONS
At the time, Selebi was the director-general of the department of foreign affairs and was embroiled in a serious clash with his minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. After a disastrous nine years as police commissioner, which eroded the ability of the police to fight crime, Selebi was eventually forced out and convicted of corruption.
In 2009, Zuma appointed the then KwaZulu-Natal community safety MEC Bheki Cele to the same position. Cele was, in turn, suspended in 2012 after a report by former public protector Thuli Madonsela found a number of irregularities in building leases.
Cele was replaced by Riah Phiyega, who was suspended after three years. The South African Police Service now has an acting commissioner who, although a career policeman, is under investigation by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate for fraud.
Instead of appointing competent career technocrats to lead the police, the NPA or the Hawks, Zuma is compelled by ethical, legal and moral issues that enmesh him to seek protection in some form or other.
The only way for the president to stay out of court, and possibly even jail, is to control key appointments, manipulate the system and purchase loyalty through patronage.
Inevitably, political survival and staying out of prison have become the president’s overriding preoccupation.
This he does through a vast network of patronage – appointing loyalists to positions of influence in the government and in state-owned enterprises — although there are some exceptions in the Cabinet and elsewhere in the government.
Zuma’s patronage politics and the lack of policy stability are destroying the ANC.
Since he became president, he has expanded and reshuffled his Cabinet 11 times, averaging 8.6 months between reshuffles.
This was probably to be expected, in part because Zuma assumed the presidency with little to offer in terms of policy or new ideas, except a desire to oust Mbeki and protect himself from prosecution.
The result is a regularly changing — and large and expensive — Cabinet that pays lip service to the vision of the National Development Plan, numerous policy contradictions — look no further than policy on visas, management of stateowned enterprises, industry, energy, communications and land reform — and a government that is constantly having to defend the office of the president from one ethical and moral lapse to the other.
The main divisions within the ANC have led to policy confusion and even the development of a parallel security state.