Slippery Zuma will not hoodwink Zondo
These are the days of miracle and wonder. Late on Tuesday, President Jacob Zuma relented, took a step back, gave up, capitulated or submitted. Take your pick.
In December, he was still appealing, at every turn, against efforts to force him to constitute a commission of inquiry into state capture as required in the very last report produced by former public protector Thuli Madonsela.
That was back in October 2016 and a lot of water has since flowed under the bridge. Not only have the courts backed Madonsela’s contention that Zuma could not appoint the head of an inquiry into himself and his family and friends; Zuma is no longer president of the ANC and his successor in the party, Cyril Ramaphosa, has been instructed by the courts to replace the head of the National Prosecuting Authority — until now Zuma’s ultimate defence against the law — by February 8.
So Zuma finally acted, announcing the creation of Madonsela’s judicial inquiry. As directed by her, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, and not the president this time, chose the judge who will preside over it. That would be Judge Ray Zondo, the deputy chief justice and as solid a jurist as you could wish for.
Because we are dealing with Zuma here, slippery as an eel and always falling back onto Plan B or C, the assumption quickly formed has been that the inquiry, when it starts, will be wide ranging — focusing not only on the Guptas and the Zumas but on other areas of criminal abuse of the state too. Zuma, in his announcement, deliberately left room for this interpretation.
“The commission must seek to uncover not just the conduct of some, but of all those who may have rendered our state or parts thereof vulnerable to control by forces other than the public for which government is elected,” he said.
“There should be no area of corruption and culprit that should be spared the extent of this commission of inquiry.”
Nice try there, JZ, but you’ll have to wait well into your eighties or perhaps nineties for some new ANC leader or some new chief justice (neither of whom you’ll have the pleasure of appointing so you’ll have to trust your luck) to investigate state capture in a way that does not centrally focus on just your role and that of your family and the Guptas in it.
There was some doubt about this soon after the announcement, but it seemed quickly to dissipate. The Zondo inquiry, because it flows as a direct consequence and instruction of Madonsela’s State of Capture investigation, will stick to just that investigation.
Zuma cannot rewrite the rules. And neither Zondo nor Mogoeng will have been foolish enough to agree to become involved in anything too easily vulnerable to legal challenge.
Once again, Zuma demonstrates just how poorly advised he is. With his loud, brash and boorish friends and his appalling political and legal advisers a bitter end to his political career has been inevitable. They have undone him. When he goes sometime in 2018, he will not be able do it with class. It is too late.
Madonsela, a greater judicial intellect than anyone Zuma listens to, was clear: “What has to be investigated is what my [probe] was investigating. There is no room to expand the commission to include what was never investigated.
“There is nothing under the sun stopping President Zuma or any president from initiating 20 judicial inquiries into state capture by white monopoly capital. But this one is specifically about the Gupta family, the president and his son,” Madonsela told News24 on Tuesday.
Ouch.… But still on the hunt for signs that Zuma is somehow still running the show while Ramaphosa struggles to make progress, lots of commentary on social media after Zuma announced the inquiry focused on how clever he was to have done it the day before the first meeting of the ANC’s new national executive committee meeting in East London.
That was, people reckoned, because recalling him from the Union Buildings would be a topic of discussion at Wednesday’s meeting and that one of the chief reasons for toppling him was that he had thus far declined to create the inquiry. So he had lanced the boil at the very last moment. Not particularly clever and, anyway, I can’t see that recall ever having been a possibility at the first meeting of a new national executive committee. If it does need to recall him there will be no end of reasons to in supply. But I suspect that Zuma will resign or be sacked by Parliament.
The thing to wait for is Ramaphosa’s “January 8” speech on Saturday. That is when the clock starts ticking, both for him and Zuma. South Africans may be confused at being spoken to straight by a political leader for once. But once he speaks, Cyril knows he will have to act.
I cannot think of any but a handful of national executive committee members who have anything to gain from Zuma continuing to be head of state and many with a lot to lose if he does. There’s an election in 2019. Even his supporters aren’t all fools. The great bulk of the ANC and its leadership will rally to Ramaphosa. Zuma, the ANC’s single greatest political liability, will soon be gone.
WHAT HAS TO BE INVESTIGATED IS WHAT MY PROBE WAS INVESTIGATING. THERE IS NO ROOM TO EXPAND THE COMMISSION
Thuli Madonsela Former public protector