Get rid of gangsters and rebuild democracy

EVERY TIME one thinks we have heard the worst about President Jacob Zuma and his acolytes or fraudsters or gangster associates more emerges, as with the extracts from Jacques Pauw’s book, The President’s Keepers.

We literally have Glen Agliotti referring in a secret discussion amongst gangsters to Zuma being reliable, in that he is one of them, that is, a gangster. “No, he is fine. He is a gangster like us.” He can be counted on to cover their backs in illegal smuggling and none of them will face the legal consequences of their crimes.

Zuma is at once a small-time crook in the sense that his greed is insatiable and he does not think about the consequences.

Like a child, he does not think of the long term. Simultaneously, we know, he is part of a larger criminal network that has usurped state power in many respects, capturing decision-making to divert funds towards himself and his close associates.

I do not say those who visited Zuma on us were aware of all his flaws, though they did know he was a man with little integrity, almost certainly a sexual predator and a person with a high tolerance for unlawful actions. His respect for democratic values was already suspect.

This is no minor error that was visited on us in the “Polokwane spring”, as the SACP termed it. Whatever “irruption of democracy” the SACP may have claimed we were seeing has now turned into a savaging of democracy, depleting the wealth of the country and undermining the wellbeing of all citizens, especially the poorest of the poor, whose interests allegedly drove the SACP and Cosatu to champion Zuma.

The economy has been run into the ground. It is not simply the result of the inevitable laws of capitalism wreaking its destruction on a weaker economy, aided by conservative macro-economic policies. The Zumaites consciously robbed state-owned entities (SoEs), intended as one of the main drivers of transformation. Not only did those deployed to SoEs divert funds towards private wealth but we now know this was part of a wider process, much larger in scope and impact on the state as a whole, than the corruption of the Schabir Shaik period. The quantities and scale of Shaik’s corruption is so pitifully small compared with the present “state capture”.

The looting has had a devastating effect on the economy, with the debt to GDP ratio rising to almost 55% and calculated to be 61% by 2022. This debt has not been created through negligence, in the main, but by increasing what is owed by consciously creating mechanisms to rob state-owned entities and the fiscus more generally, in order to benefit a few.

As others have noted, this debt has a knock-on effect, with ratings agencies almost certain to downgrade our economy further. Together with the existence of such a large debt, the borrowing required to keep the economy going will cost still more. The best forecasts suggest miniscule growth, at best 1% next year, implying still greater unemployment and poverty with the cost of basic foodstuffs and other necessities rising. There is less state money available to meet basic needs, required for people to live with human dignity, including sanitation, water, housing, proper schooling and health care.

Leaders of the ANC-led alliance got us into this mess. Have they realistic ideas to get us out of it? The best they can do is tell their members – and us – to vote for one or another candidate for the ANC presidency.

Any living being will be better than Zuma, one must concede. But what evidence has been presented to show that any candidate, even if apparently not corrupt, has the qualities or vision required to deal with a crisis of the proportions that we now encounter? What have the candidates advanced as a vision to remedy what has been so badly damaged, with their complicity, over the last eight years?

I do not have an immediate and precise vision or programme to remedy the situation, and I make no apologies for that. That someone does not offer an alternative to ideas that will not remedy a problem does not mean one should settle for inadequate ideas. I believe such a vision ought to be developed through listening and engaging, not simply by presenting the public with some or other idea that a grouping has formulated. The approach should be that we need to find a way of arriving at a solution that is sustainable.

The ANC conference may or may not go ahead, but if it does, we should have no illusions that our problems will be solved there, no matter who is elected president.

What is the route we need to follow in trying to initiate discussions to find a solution? How do we approach the question of bringing down Zuma and restoring our democratic life?

A number of ways are already being used to weaken his political lifespan – mass demonstrations of public feeling involving a range of sectors of society, parliamentary motions of no confidence and attempts to impeach him, legal actions of a variety of kinds that entrench the understanding that we have as president a person who is contemptuous of his duties under the oath he has sworn as president.

More generally, opposition parties aim to vote out the ANC in 2019, and may form a coalition led by the DA, although there have been some problems in managing these at the level of local government.

Cumulatively the actions already in motion at various times in different places do not suffice as mechanisms to demonstrate the power we can wield in order to drive the crooks, not only but especially Zuma, out of government.

That power has been manifested in the streets and exists in a range of organisations or is potentially deployed through people outside of political parties.

What is interesting about the various manifestations of public anger is that they have often involved people who may never have been in protests before.

What we need to recognise and utilise to the full is that the level of unity against Zuma extends far beyond the broad forces that fought apartheid, embracing sections of business as well as a range of people or communities deriving from the poorest of the poor. Whatever their different orientations on socio-economic questions, the diverse sectors agree #ZumaMustFall.

We need to find a way of building that unity into an organised form. This need not be a political party, at least initially, but it needs to be something that exists beyond the next demonstration, large or small.

It can only be sustained if those comprising the components of unity recognise that political goals, like the removal of Zuma, need continued and organised effort. That enables people to communicate and plan what happens after the next demonstration, not simply respond to what various high-profile individuals or organisations may agree to call for.

Once you have participants who are not necessarily in leadership of organisations or even members of organisations becoming part of something that is organised, no matter how loose that organisation may be, then one is talking about a different quality of power. In that situation, distinct groups of people engage with one another, reflect on what has been done and what can be done to enhance that power. That comprises the evaluation and planning that is so badly needed.

We cannot underestimate the value of the various important legal initiatives that have been undertaken.

But we must measure these, not only in terms of the democratic space they have created or affirmed, but in how they relate to organised power.

What is won in the courts, valuable as it may be, is generally won on behalf of people. Organised power is a direct demonstration of popular voices and is thus a demonstration of what the people themselves demand, not because the law says so but because they show directly that they, the people, believe it is needed.

Outrage is expressed in a range of ways and the media has been invaluable in highlighting what has been done that has evoked outrage. But those wishing to recover what has been lost need to find ways of channeling anger into effective channels that demonstrate ongoing democratic power. This cannot be done in a few days or weeks. It will take a long time for various actors to find one another, located in quite different and sometimes similar organisations, some outside of any organisations. All these need to be joined together. It can be done because they share common loyalty to the constitution and democracy. In building a new unity we need to draw on human resources from a range of political orientations. It is not the left alone that can remove Zuma. It is not business alone or the parties in parliament. We need a range of forces which, for sometimes overlapping but also distinct reasons related to where they are located, want to see the back of Zuma or see Zuma behind bars, where he ought to have been almost 10 years back.

We do not drop legal actions or expressions of public outrage. These must be encouraged, even if spontaneous. But what is needed, more fundamentally, is something that will endure. And that means slow, patient organisation, even if the problems are urgent.

Raymond Suttner is a part-time professor attached to Rhodes University and an emeritus professor at Unisa. This article is from the Daily Maverick