Zuma and Putin — two peas in a pillaged pod
• Patronage and manipulation have served leaders well as they cling onto power while plundering their countries
Unsurprisingly, President Jacob Zuma and President Vladimir Putin are “friends”. Their relationship was confirmed by the rambunctious noise that followed the premature leaking of information on the more than R1-trillion nuclear programme Eskom is pursuing.
Both presidents have risen to power through several levels of government and within their political organisations with skilled precision.
Like Putin, Zuma is a highly trained operative. He received military training after he was recruited by uMkhonto weSizwe. He rose through its ranks to become the ANC’s chief intelligence officer in exile.
It requires a certain type of personality to become a president — a rare genetic breed, moulded into leadership because of unwavering ambition. What is particularly fascinating about Zuma and Putin is their dexterity in carefully navigating their paths to the highest public office.
For Zuma, the road to the ANC presidency and then to head of state required several political moves he executed with the skill of an expert manipulator. His rise to the pinnacle of political power is without doubt correlated to the deceptive skills he perfected running covert operations for the ANC and infiltrating the apartheid state security forces.
Similarly, Putin’s reputation as a member of the reviled KGB precedes him. He ran covert missions for the former Soviet Union in East Germany. Later, he headed the Russian Federal Security Service, which replaced the KGB as the main state security agency when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Described as an articulate law scholar mentored by his professor, Anatoly Sobchak, Putin displayed more ambition than most of his peers.
Sobchak was the first democratically elected mayor of St Petersburg in Russia and named Putin as his deputy.
Several historians attribute Putin’s meteoric, yet peculiar, rise to the helm of Russia’s government to the training and specific skills he learnt as a KGB operative. He is described as a persuasive man with an extremely sharp eye for exploiting people’s weaknesses and an expert at intimidating people.
Zuma and Putin are cut from the same cloth. They are skilled architects, creating a political system that relies on patronage and is reinforced by corrupt relationships. By exerting influence on business through their intricate circle of “economic gatekeepers”, they carefully control the distribution of state resources to their loyalists.
Their parallel understanding of the importance of controlling public perceptions is intriguing. Zuma and Putin have proven that they know exactly how to win support from their constituents to further their political ends — particularly when their backs are against the wall.
In 2008, as the end of Putin’s second term as president drew near, he manufactured an audacious arrangement that would solidify his power. Like Boris Yeltsin before him, Putin strategically appointed his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, as president, effectively swapping places with him.
However, in 2012, he took over as president once again, fearing a new administration might change the political dynamics. The former KGB spy was now comparable to a modern-day tsar.
He further tightened his grip on power by contriving the legislative amendment of the presidential term in the Duma from four to six years. The Russian constitution allows an incumbent to serve for two consecutive terms as president. Nonetheless, it does not prevent a former president from running for the highest executive office in Russia beyond two terms.
The collapse of the former Soviet Union brought about renewed hope and the promise of a better Russia for all. This led to the formation of the Russian Federation, with Yeltsin serving as its first democratically elected president. He promised the people the country would transition from a communist to a capitalist, market-driven economy.
However, the curse of selfinterest infiltrated the Yeltsin administration. The new government ignored the corruption that occurred under Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership, and Yeltsin’s tenure was marred by corruption scandals that eventually led to his political demise.
But despite many of Yeltsin’s supporters denouncing his leadership, he nonetheless created a succession plan that would keep him out of jail when his presidential term ended.
He appointed the relatively unknown Putin — already involved in questionable deals as deputy mayor of St Petersburg — as his deputy president, and in return, Putin granted Yeltsin full presidential immunity.
Similarly, the ANC government under Zuma failed to prosecute bureaucrats involved in corrupt deals with politically connected people. The corruption networks in SA grew to resemble Russia’s.
People close to the president have been named in widespread fraud, money laundering and corruption allegations, often relating to business conducted with the state.
Zuma and Putin are experts at swaying public perception and building blind patronage. Under Zuma’s watch, corruption has become entrenched, business confidence is at a record low, government debt is on the rise, while tax collections fall short of targets, unemployment has become a crisis, crime levels are at new highs and the social cohesion Nelson Mandela built is being destroyed.
Since Zuma took office in 2009, the public relations machine in the Presidency and the party has boisterously blamed “white monopoly capital” for the stagnant economy — a smart move to redirect working class discontent towards the “white monopoly capitalists”.
It is well timed. Elections will be held in 18 months and the ANC is desperately clinging to power. It is inciting the notion that there is no better alternative for a black government in a country in which the majority of the population is black — but in reality, the ANC government continues to obsess more about creating black billionaires than creating jobs for the masses.
It is inexplicable that a country that is supposedly the economic hub of Africa has an estimated 50% unemployment rate among the youth (aged 1835). The Gini coefficient measurement considers SA to be one of the most unequal countries in the world.
Russia faces the same plight. A report by Credit Suisse in 2016 found that the median wealth of an average Russian was $850 compared with $1,000 in India.
What these figures show is that the governments of Russia and SA are incompetent in distributing resources and “opportunities” to its people. This is the direct result of the ingrained culture of state corruption.
Despite Zuma’s implication in various acts of impropriety involving the Gupta family, he is still the president of SA. He has proved on several occasions that his power base within the ANC is still intact. The chances of his removal from office before the ANC’s national elective conference have effectively dissipated. The ANC has still been resolute in defending its leader. When his presidential term ends, Zuma will face 700-odd charges ranging from fraud to money laundering. This could happen in 2019 or sooner (if he is deposed as ANC president).
But he has shown in the past decade that he never yields, even in the face of defeat. He will not go down without a fight.
As December nears, there are likely to be more crafted moves by the Zuma faction aimed at retaining what has been plundered. His public endorsement of his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, as a presidential candidate earlier in 2017 and her recent appointment as an MP have been obvious in their intent and they mirror Yeltsin’s choice of Putin.
Zuma is conjuring up a scheme to appoint his chosen successor. SA is dealing with a man who is fighting for his freedom at all costs.
THEY ARE SKILLED ARCHITECTS, CREATING A POLITICAL SYSTEM THAT RELIES ON PATRONAGE HE HAS SHOWN IN THE PAST DECADE THAT HE NEVER YIELDS … HE WILL NOT GO DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT