Too soon to celebrate Zuma’s survival

President Jacob Zuma’s supporters have been rather smug since Wednesday’s national working committee media briefing. If today’s “anti-Zuma” marches flop — as they probably will — Zuma’s fans will become positively delirious.

Like president Thabo Mbeki’s acolytes in the run-up to the ANC’s 2007 Polokwane conference, they are starting to think they cannot lose. The reality, however, is that Zuma’s political problems have not gone away. He is still languishing under a personal legal cloud. His “lame duck” clock is still running down; the bell will toll at the end of December, when he will no longer be ANC president.

Nkosazana DlaminiZuma’s succession campaign is floundering — so much so Zuma ducked out of appointing her to a cabinet position. His most likely successors, ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa and treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize, have now put on public record their unhappiness with the reshuffle. He has been deeply damaged by sacking his finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas. The ANC’s tripartite alliance partners have asked him to resign.

The ANC faces a split after its December conference, and electoral disaster in 2019. The demonisation of Gordhan drew on a moral narrative about global racial and economic hegemony. Ratings agencies were cast as actors in a grand drama of exploitation. Zuma no doubt hoped to reshuffle after a ratings downgrade — rather than precipitating one. He will now own the results: price inflation, higher interest rates, a fiscal squeeze as debt-servicing and risk premiums rise, and capital flight.

The power of a political leader rests on wide acceptance of his legitimacy. A party boss can only retain control of his party if he is seen to respect its core rules and adhere to its central values. A president or premier can only lead her people if her elevation to high office has been in a legitimate political process, and she has followed appropriate constitutional and moral conventions.

Zuma is now linked in the public imagination, above all, to the abuse of public funds and to the Gupta family. The scrutiny of his ministers and officials will be intense in the few months before he must step down as ANC president. Efforts to break into public-sector pension funds, to sign up to longterm nuclear procurement deals, or to divert resources to prominent families, cannot easily be hidden.

The many mercenaries for hire will promise to unlock the Treasury, to unleash surveillance systems, or to provide the technical advice looters need to escape detection. But honest public servants will shelve decisions and draw upon their reservoir of bureaucratic stalling capacities. They can minimise damage to SA and insulate themselves against personal legal culpability.

HE IS STILL LANGUISHING UNDER A PERSONAL LEGAL CLOUD. HIS ‘LAME DUCK’ CLOCK IS STILL RUNNING DOWN

This does not mean there will not be major costs for SA. The “special adviser” groupies of a former home affairs minister cannot replace immensely capable officials such as directorgeneral Lungisa Fuzile. The government has depended heavily on partners in business and civil society, who have mostly acted patriotically to support the state — within the limits that market economics and donor funding permit. With the humiliation of Gordhan, their goodwill has been lost.

The crisis Zuma has created will also be felt in taxation. Compliance depends in part upon fear, a language Zuma’s followers seem to understand. But it also requires legitimacy, and the president has been rapidly squandering this governmental resource.