Zuma’s man with a plan

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma’s decision to reshuffle his cabinet makes perfect sense, but only if you see things as Zuma does. The problem is that, in recent times, the president has taken fewer and fewer people into his confidence, and certainly not the public at large.

As a result, public perception is all too often at odds with what the president seems to be thinking.

Let’s take, as an example,his future as the president of South Africa.

It is generally accepted that Zuma will voluntarily step down as leader of the ANC at the party’s national elective conference at the end of this year.

He has said so himself and there’s no reason for us not to believe him in this regard. But that’s the only real clarity we have in this succession battle.

As things stand, Zuma’s successor is likely to be either Cyril Ramaphosa, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma or Zweli Mkhize.

We can reasonably assume that all three will realise Zuma will hurt their party’s chances of winning the 2019 general elections and, as a result, will recall him as quickly as they can after assuming the leadership of the party.

The same happened to Thabo Mbeki in 2008, and Mbeki did what any loyal cadre would do – he resigned and went quietly into retirement. The expectation is that Zuma will go quietly and tend to his homestead in Nkandla.

But nobody seems to have told Zuma that this is the plan.

His cabinet reshuffle, the second this year, is a clear indication that he has every intention of seeing out his term as president of the republic. His reshuffle is an 18-month view, not a two-month plan.

The reshuffle also proved something else: Zuma no longer cares what the ANC thinks or, for that matter, its tripartite alliance partners the SACP and Cosatu.

If he did, he would have consulted the ANC before both his cabinet reshuffles this year and he wouldn’t have given Blade Nzimande, the leader of the SACP, the middle finger.

If Zuma doesn’t go quietly, the ANC may very well be forced to go to Parliament next year to have him impeached. But given how divided the party is, and the fact that Zuma has survived several such attempts, the president has nothing to worry about.

The rest of us do.