Zuma may end up like Mugabe

JACQUES Pauw’s aptly named book, The President’s Keepers, is selling like hotcakes.

So great is the demand that bookstores have run out of copies and you have to place an order if you want one.

So why all the interest in a book, in an age where cellphones and computers have replaced books?

Pauw’s book is revealing. It claims the president will stop at nothing to capture the state for himself and his cronies and is protected and kept in power by a band of thieves, who benefit mutually from licking up to him. In his customary way, Zuma has dismissed the book as a work of fiction.

Businessman Roy Moodley, who allegedly paid Zuma R1 million a month, has also rubbished the book.

But if it is true, why would Moodley have been so generous to the president? Is Zuma destitute?

It is inconceivable that a man like Zuma would not have had his fingers in Sars and tried to avoid paying tax.

While many South Africans have welcomed the book, those implicated in it are up in arms. The truth is hurting?

Pauw faces several legal threats from the State Security Agency, Sars and the Fraser family. Never mind the moral implications of the book, the State Security Agency argues that the author contravened the Tax Administration Act and was liable for criminal prosecution for revealing an individual’s tax status.

But, conversely, it can also be argued that Zuma is a public figure and his tax affairs are of public interest. Should the law protect an alleged criminal, who has allegedly been evading tax?

Which is the greater crime, concealing the theft of public funds or exposing it? The interests of the State are paramount and not the privacy of a public figure.

Pauw’s book is a bombshell. It could be devastating for Zuma and his allies, especially after the coup just across the Limpopo.

Could what happened to his idol Robert Mugabe happen to him? Don’t laugh it off, Zuma.

T MARKANDAN Silverglen