We toast Zuma over inquiry
The nation went to bed on Tuesday with another Jacob Zuma latenight show, this time announcing that he has appointed the long overdue judicial commission of inquiry into state capture.
It is an unfortunate hallmark of the Zuma presidency that it somehow feels as if South Africa has heaved a huge collective sigh of relief when he is seen to be doing the right thing – awfully belated as this announcement is.
We are well into the second year of a game of merry-go-round in the country’s courts as Zuma seeks legal loopholes to avoid carrying out the recommendations of former public protector Thuli Madonsela.
It all shows how compromised a president Zuma is that such a routine appointment of an inquiry needed to be so complicated.
It is one of the unfortunate results of having a head of state and government who has at every turn proven to be lacking probity.
With the election of a new president of the governing ANC last month, Zuma lost his grip on his almost-absolute power and his new-found eagerness to establish the commission – to be headed by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo – has understandably also been met with a degree of scepticism in some quarters. Feel free to count us in. Nonetheless, we welcome Zuma’s appointment of the commission of inquiry and are pleased that the president cannot play a major part in determining the terms of reference of the probe.
The main reason for such an arrangement as set out by Madonsela in the State of Capture report is sound – conflict of interest. President Zuma cannot be seen to be investigating himself because he is the pivot on which the whole matter turns.
Many have read the sudden aboutturn as one of those Zumaesque chess moves, with an eye on the goings-on in the ANC. The party’s new national executive meets for the first time in East London this week, amid laudable calls for Zuma to leave office. The rationale is that he was, as usual, buying himself time in the belief that carrying out one of the resolutions of the ANC conference will lengthen his stay in the Union Buildings.
Whatever you make of the announcement of the inquiry, we welcome the grand opportunity it represents to rid this nation of the palpable stink of the past eight years of the Zuma era.