To the dunghill, O Zuma!

Some people can never die. Even when they expire physically, they haunt you from the grave. You encounter them in every conversation. You quote them copiously to validate your own worldview. Ahmed Kathrada was such a man. As I watched the anti-apartheid icon’s funeral in Johannesburg, I felt sorry for South African President, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, who had been banished from the event by Kathrada’s family in accordance with the wishes of their patriarch.

Last year, in the wake of the several scandals surrounding every breath taken by Zuma, Kathrada, as a senior ANC stalwart, had written the president to save the country from further embarrassment by resigning from his position.

Scandalised that the thieving going on in the South African government was not what the anti-apartheid struggle was about, he counselled Zuma to take the only honourable step remaining — resign.

“Now that the court has found that the president failed to uphold‚ defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law‚” wrote Kathrada, dear Comrade President‚ don’t you think your continued stay as president will only serve to deepen the crisis of confidence in the government of the country?”

He added: “And bluntly‚ if not arrogantly‚ in the face of such persistently widespread criticism‚ condemnation and demand‚ is it asking too much to express the hope that you will choose the correct way that is gaining momentum‚ to consider stepping down?”

But Zuma was not minded to do such a thing. I don’t know whether the problem is a result of being educationally challenged, but Zuma thinks he is an African emperor of sorts and is therefore entitled to some kind of divine rights, including cradlesnatching rights.

In Europe and most of Asia, when a leader is caught stealing, he or she is disgraced out of office and prosecuted. In Africa, the thief hires drummers and cheer leaders to sing his praise and dance to celebrate their enslavement. He distributes some crumbs among the political elite of the party and parliament and laughs his accusers to scorn. As long as it is a game of numbers, he reckons that he will prevail. But is this the kind of behaviour the majority ANC should be condoning and protecting?

Zuma was so stained that he stank. He would have fouled the air had he attended Kathrada’s funeral. It would have been an insult to the memory of the great man if the traitor of the people’s cause was allowed to mount the podium to metaphorically piss on Kathrada’s grave.

In the midst of calls for his resignation, Zuma is busy playing political chess. A veiled threat here, one sack there, one palliative over there, another favour at the other end… He thinks it is all a game. But it is not, because we are talking of no less than the destiny of the second largest economy in Africa.

Revelations from his shady dealings with the Gupta family show that the government is in the pocket of the Indian wheeler and dealer. The Guptas decide who holds what position and for how long, depending on the extent of cooperation they enjoy from the official. Indeed, when the sexscapades, profligacy, conversion of public property to private estate and desecration of constitutional imperatives — all of which have indelibly tarred Zuma, no one would be surprised if even his shadow refuses to walk on the same side of the road with him. He is contagion personified.

To think that Zuma occupies the eminent seat vacated by the inspiring Madiba and the technocratic Thabo Mbeki makes one wonder how South Africa, the lion, sired this thieving monkey? And where was Zuma on the day God was distributing shame?

A commentator, Prince Mashele who serves as Executive Director of South Africa’s Centre for Politics and Research, puts it all down to the fact that we had been overrating the country’s democracy for so long, forgetting that South Africa is just another African country. “The idea that a president can resign simply because a court of law has delivered an adverse judgment is Western. Only the Prime Minister of Iceland does that; African rulers will never do that”, says Mashele.

Apparently Zuma — the showerman, the Gupta-gated betrayer of his people —has resolved to take his country with him to the bottomless pit if he falls from the precipice. He is already tarnishing his party, ANC beyond redemption. The rand and government bonds weakened after the ruling party rejected calls for his resignation. ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe made a 360 degree turn to give unconditional support to Zuma, which made Economic Freedom Fighter’s Julius Malema deride him as a “dubious old man”.

The vets of the anti-apartheid struggle have also slipped in a threat of war in support of their crooked comrade, Zuma. The struggle for the liberation of the people has been reduced to a picnic of bandits.

Our forebears used to say that when you shoot the zebra on his black stripe, the white stripe dies too. It is the historical responsibility of ALL South Africans to reignite the fire with which they defeated apartheid and cobbled together a rainbow nation, to consign this sorry specimen of humanity to the dunghill of history. Ahmed Kathrada is dead but he lives.

Some other people think they are alive and in power, but they are dead.