Self-serving Zuma shows why he is not a man for SA’s future

NEVER before in the democratic era have so many taken to the streets to demand that a sitting president vacate his office. President Jacob Zuma and his loyalists can blame “white monopoly capital”, supposedly foreign-backed agents of “the regime change agenda”, and “enemies of transformation” all they want, but the fact remains that he is solely responsible for the breakdown of trust between the citizens and his government which led to the nationwide protests on Friday.

His spin-doctoring machinery has been hard at work all weekend — and is likely to continue to do so in days to come — trying to racialise the protests by claiming that they were largely attended by white people who have not truly embraced majority rule in this country. But what we observed on Friday paints a different picture.

Not since the days of the defiance campaigns of the late 1980s have we seen South Africans of different races and religions marching side by side in support of a common political demand.

South Africans are gatvol and, judging by some of the placards at the protests, have lost all respect for our head of state. And they have every reason to. This is a president who has proved time and again that his word is not to be trusted and that he puts his selfish interests ahead of those of the country — no matter the consequences.

It was Zuma who plunged the country into an economic crisis and sent the markets into a tailspin when he fired Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister and replaced him with Des van Rooyen.

Under fire for the decision, Zuma told the nation that he had done so because Nene was going to be appointed the African head of the newly-formed Brics bank.

More than a year later, that appointment has not been made. Clearly, there never was a Brics job and Nene was removed simply because he would not kowtow to the wishes of the president and his friends, the Gupta family.

Pravin Gordhan, the man who took over at the Treasury after Van Rooyen’s weekend-long stint, now also finds himself out in the cold.

Like Nene, Gordhan has been removed on spurious grounds.

First, Zuma cited an “intelligence report” that allegedly uncovered Gordhan’s plans to meet with people who sought to remove the government from power while on an international investor road show in London. When that justification was dismissed, including by some ANC top six officials, Zuma and his backers changed tack and blamed it all on a breakdown of relations between the minister and the president.

Why must the nation believe him? The reality we have to confront is that we have a dishonest man as our president.

Not only did Zuma mislead the nation on Nene and Gordhan, he has also tried to evade the truth on many other controversies.

All that seems to matter to him is staying in power, keeping the Guptas happy and anointing a successor who will not threaten his interests or those of the connected family.

It is tempting to give ourselves a ray of hope by reminding each other that, constitutionally, Zuma only has two more years in office. If we could survive him for the past eight years, surely giving him two more years is nothing?

There are others who pin their hopes on December. They believe that the ANC’s elective conference will usher in a new leadership which will not be beholden to Zuma and that, as a result, that leadership will do to him what he did to Thabo Mbeki in 2008.

But the longer Zuma stays in office, the more destructive he becomes. Keeping him for another two years may prove too expensive for the country. The jubilant reactions among his close associates, including Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane, to the devastating news that S&P Global Ratings had downgraded South Africa to junk status shows that the company the president keeps does not have the country’s interests at heart.

Left to their own devices, they will burn South Africa to ashes if that is what it takes for them to remain in power.

Banking on the ANC’s internal processes to deal with the president is also proving futile. The party has long been sunk by the Zuma crisis and, as its national working committee meeting proved this week, it cannot escape it.

Zuma and his allies control all key decisionmaking structures in the ANC and are likely to have their way come the elective conference.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, the one person who stood a remote chance of disrupting the faction’s dominance, effectively threw in the towel this week when he allowed Zuma’s faction to bully him and secretary-general Gwede Mantashe into withdrawing their criticism of Zuma’s reckless cabinet reshuffle.

This has left Ramaphosa looking like a leader with no backbone and ANC branches are unlikely to back such a leader in a fight against Zuma.

The solution to the crisis South Africa finds itself in today lies in the hands of its citizens.

Friday’s protests should galvanise all into a movement that would change this flawed system that allows one man to stay in power by manipulating systems in the ruling party even when it is clear citizens no longer want him.