Even Zuma can hear the noise

What President Jacob Zuma misread in the sorry saga of his midnight massacre of his former Cabinet is twofold: the savage backlash from ANC leaders to what many of them deem to have been a unilateral beating of a one-man band on a drum only lent to the presidency by its citizens; and whether this truly coalesces into a chorus loud enough to unseat the man who unleashed the cacophony of discontent.

Zuma’s deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa, axed finance minister Pravin Gordhan, the party’s secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize have sung the first notes of discord.

They have been joined by fired public service and administration minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi, who said the manner in which Zuma changed his Cabinet was a wake-up call to all South Africans, and former national police commissioner Bheki Cele.

Ramatlhodi was among those who came out to say he had declined a social engagement with the Gupta family shortly after Zuma appointed him to his previous job as mineral resources minister, before being removed and replaced by one of Zuma’s allies, Mosebenzi Zwane. “You saw the spots of the leopard last night,” he said in the wake of Zuma’s drastic blood-letting.

Cele rubbished the purported “intelligence report” on which Zuma seemed to base the dismissals of Gordhan and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, saying as someone who had worked with the intelligence community, he regarded the so-called intelligence report, which he had seen, as amampunge (fallacy).

“The intelligence report that I saw, having worked with these structures, is amampunge. I have suffered in something that was called an intelligence report myself,” he said, adding he hoped Zuma had not been influenced by the report when he fired Gordhan and Jonas.

Whether this growing discord gathers voice depends of the ordinary ANC MPs. But it is a clamour Zuma must certainly listen to.