Daily Dispatch
Anchor in sea of uncertainty
THE volatility of the past 10 days in the country’s political sphere is unprecedented post-1994. The speed at which so many significant events have rolled out is astonishing:
The Constitutional Court declined to hear an appeal by the National Prosecution Authority on whether 783 charges of corruption against President Jacob Zuma should be revived. That was because the Supreme Court of Appeals is currently entertaining the same appeal from the NPA.
The Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan was charged for fraud by the national director of public prosecutions Shaun Abrahams. The value of the rand plummeted. The long prevaricating Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa finally picked a side – that of Gordhan.
The outgoing public protector was gagged from releasing a report on state capture by the president and another cabinet minister, Des van Rooyen, who features in her report.
The finance minister then went on the offensive, disclosing in an affidavit to the High Court that the Gupta family and companies they control were implicated in “suspicious transactions” worth almost R7-billion made over the past four years.
Gordhan’s affidavit also revealed that the Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane was actively targeting banks that refused to deal with the Gupta family, and his department had kept back information about hundreds of millions from a Guptaowned mine being moved out of SA.
If that wasn’t enough the leader of the ANC Youth League, Collen Maine, popularly known as Oros, urged MK veterans to take up arms to “defend the president”.
It is hard to believe that this spectacular unravelling within the governing party took place within 10 days and as the violence on campuses nationwide spilt onto city streets. But sure enough, the political heavyweights knocked the campus troubles from the centre of the media spotlight.
Whether anyone would have imagined such a sequence happening at all, let alone at such a speed, is moot. The important question is, what happens next.
The status quo is not sustainable. Something will have to give at some point.
In many countries just one of the events outlined above could have brought down an entire government or a president. But there are reasonable grounds for certainty that Zuma has no intention of going anywhere. If anything the events of the last 10 days indicate an opposite agenda. What is there to reassure citizens? Some of the institutions intended to safeguard democratic processes and the rule of law have been neutered, including parliament, the NPA and the Hawks. Much hinges on the new public protector Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane and the courts.
While Mkhwebane is an unknown factor, she faces a singular test and deserves the benefit of the doubt. The courts meanwhile are a proven anchor in a sea of uncertainty.