Zuma to be afraid of turning tide

AND so now we are here. No one likes the president. He cannot speak in the Free State or many other places in the country.

His comrades boo him. The ANC, the organisation that suckled him and raised him, is rent down the middle.

Half of his comrades are ashamed of him. The other half detests him too, but wants to steal along with him.

He is afraid of his comrades. In parliament, if the bid for a secret ballot in a motion of no confidence is carried, his own comrades may walk away from him.

He knows that this is a distinct possibility. This may be the end of him. He does not know who to trust. He is paranoid and he is afraid. So now we are here. The president’s security detail is so massive he looks like he is a leader of a banana republic.

He believes his comrades are plotting against him, that his enemies want to kill him, that his wives want to kill him.

He is lonely. Those who speak to him now are those with whom he plots and machinates. This is where we are now. South Africa is leaderless, confused and adrift. Those who South Africa will become a failed state. We are nearly there. The president, a known predator, slept with his young charge, a woman who later reported him for rape. He did not feel it sad or worrying to visit the home of a child who was similarly violated.

The rot is everywhere. Look at Sunday’s front pages. Looting in the water ministry and department. Looting at Eskom and other state-owned enterprises. We are seeing looting that indicates desperation and a realisation that these days may be coming to an end. The tide is turning. The Zuma bet that South Africans will sit and watch while their country is stolen is falling apart. New movements are being born. The future is going to look very different. But time is of the essence.

Last week the SA Council of Churches released its own examination of state capture, describing the Zuma administration as a mafia state. It was telling who was in the room: from Anwar Dramat, the former Hawks head, to respected civil servant Trevor Fowler to the cleric and ANC leader Frank Chikane.

Zuma might not see it, but we can see it: The United Democratic Front, the organisation that shook apartheid to its very core in the 1980s, was in that room. And it is growing and spreading and getting a voice.

This weekend saw the extraordinary sight of Business Leadership SA’s Bonang Mohale speaking at the SA Communist Party’s imbizo. Now, you know you that you are a truly divisive figure when you find business leaders and communist leaders huddled together discussing your sheer incompetence and thieving.

These are not the only formations Zuma has thrown into each other’s arms.

The EFF, a radical political party on the Left, is cheek-by-jowl with the Democratic Alliance, a centre-right party that espouses capitalism.

In fact, the entire official opposition in the SA political landscape is ranged against Zuma and his version of the ANC.

This weekend I had the pleasure of interviewing two incredible men at the Franschhoek Literary Festival in the Western Cape.

The first, author of My Own Liberator and former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, spoke about how we failed in ensuring that education was the absolute centre of our new dispensation.

Yet, in his every word and gesture I knew that men and women like him have not given up. We will hear a lot from him in the future. When our session ended the queue of admirers was massive. They all begged him to be president. Read his book and realise: he deserves to be president.

In my panel discussion with ANC veteran Khulu Mbatha, author of Unmasked, it became clear that the ANC still has many incredible men and women in its ranks.

Crucially, they realise that defeating the rot that came with Zuma will take not just ANC members, but our entire country and its citizenry.

But they are there, and they are standing up. Read Mbatha’s book to understand the current thinking of those marginalised by Zuma within the ANC, and to understand the beginnings of the push against him.

“We are at a tipping point,” he told the audience in Franschhoek.

I agree with him. Thankfully, it is Zuma and his cronies who should be afraid. Very afraid. The people are standing up against him and his mafia state. And the masses, as Oliver Tambo once said, are never wrong.