Zuma’s bookshelf trial
Kasrils digs in heels in damning book
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma is having a particularly bad week in the bookshops of this country – and it’s just got worse.
On Sunday, investigative journalist Jacques Pauw’s book, President’s Keepers, was released and has been making headlines and flying off the shelves ever since.
The author and his publisher then received a cease and desist letter from the State Security Agency (SSA) and threats of legal action by Sars over a “breach of confidential taxpayer information”.
But Pauw said yesterday that he would be defending his book in court.
On Thursday, for mer intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils – and Zuma’s comrade-in-arms in the ANC’s armed wing, MK – launched his book, A Simple Man, Kasrils and the Zuma enigma, further damning the president.
Pauw’s book claims, among other issues, that the president has been on the payroll of criminal networks.
Kasrils’s book claims that the highest echelons of the ANC and the SACP overlooked the real misgivings they had about Zuma – dating back to his days in exile – out of expediency.
“I wrote this book because people in the movement often come up to me and say: ‘Didn’t you see these flaws or was he a great guy who fell from grace?’ ” Kasrils told journalists at his publishers’ offices in Joburg.
“Those of us who worked closely with him in Mozambique and in Zambia saw the clues,” he said.
The book, written in seven parts, starts with Kasrils’s sense of betrayal when he overhears Zuma referring to him in isiZulu as “a useless white man” after they both fail to infiltrate Swaziland from Mozambique in 1982.
It then fast forwards to Zuma’s trial for the rape of Fezekile “Khwezi” Khuzwayo, the daughter of a fellow comrade of both Zuma and Kasrils. She phoned Kasrils immediately after the incident.
“It’s still a shock for me, I can hear it like a recording every time I think of it: ‘Uncle Ronnie, Jacob Zuma has raped me.’ “
Zuma was acquitted of rape in the highly public trial.
“A month before she died,” Kasrils said, “I took her and her mom to lunch. As she left, she looked me in the eye and said: ‘Uncle Ronnie, he raped me.’ I believed her. Jacob Zuma is a predatory monster.”
The book goes on to deal with the conspiracy theories that followed after Zuma became president: the e-mail saga, the spy tape scandal and the Browse Mole report.
“I’m trying to explain to our people who that man is and how we got to where we are today. We’re in a deep dark hole. We’re speeding to the edge of the precipice. This country is in dire straits.
“I write about Zuma and the charlatans around him, the toadies who have grabbed power and are ripping off our country to fill their pockets. What motivates Zuma is to keep out of jail.
“It’s about his own self-preservation and safeguarding his ill-gotten gains. The funds that he has are part of a network in which he is totally integrated with a whole mafioso which we call, thanks to (cartoonist) Zapiro, the Zuptas.”
South Africa, Kasrils said, was heading for economic implosion, with a third of the country depending on grants that the Treasury could ill afford.
He feared bread riots in the streets and a possible imposition of martial law by the president or perhaps even a coup by the “massive and highly militarised” police force.
“I wish I had been more honest about the problems in the ANC when I wrote Armed and Dangerous (his memoir) in 1993, but we weren’t in power yet. We were still under attack by (the apartheid regime).
“This time, this book deals with the warts in the ANC, where the time wasn’t appropriate before.”
His book, he said, would complement Pauw’s. “I’ve taken care to look where we have come from and how people became rotten, whereas Jacques is looking at the rot right now.”
Speaking to eNCA yesterday, Pauw accused Sars and the SSA of being contradictory. “If my book is replete with inaccuracies, why are they then taking me to court, why do they want to charge me with the Intelligence Act?”If my information is false, then I haven’t breached the law and I have written a piece of fiction.”
In the letter sent by Kgoroeadira Mudau Inc, it was claimed that the book was “replete with inaccuracies” and contained “fake information” for which Pauw and his publisher would be held accountable.
“We will argue that we are legally in possession of materials and we have not broken any laws,” Pauw told the Saturday Star.
On Zuma’s tax affairs, and his comments in the National Assembly on Thursday, Pauw said: “It’s very interesting what he said, (that) he hasn’t received any payments without declaring it.
“Up to 2014 Zuma has not declared his tax returns. It needs to be investigated. It’s not the first time that Zuma has lied in Parliament.”
Yesterday t he Right2Know campaign and opposition parties slammed the threats against Pauw and his publisher by the SSA and Sars, describing them as a threat against the media in general.
R2K said it had noted another threat by Sars to take the author to court. “R2K views these as crude acts of censorship, aimed to intimidate investigative journalists and protect the corrupt and powerful.”
The DA, IFP and African Christian Democratic Party also warned of threats against journalists.
DA communications director Mabine Seabe said it was clear Zuma had been shaken by Pauw’s book.
“It’s quite clear that this book has shaken President Zuma and his inner circle. Where in a democracy have you heard securocrats say what must be published and not published?” said Seabe.
If Zuma had issues with the book, he must go to court, Seabe said.