Zuma heads for another nosedive
If the fallout from the president’s last meeting with public protector Thuli Madonsela is anything to go by, he is in for a tough time
Busisiwe Mkhwebane will be the next public protector, President Jacob Zuma announced on Thursday, in a terse statement to say he had approved her appointment as recommended by Parliament. Mkhwebane’s term officially starts on October 15.
But in the short period remaining, her predecessor managed one more very important meeting. The popularity of the phrase notwithstanding, Thuli Madonsela is not investigating “state capture”, she said this week. “It is the media that calls it ‘state capture’ … We are going into very specific allegations against very specific people.”
T h o s e a l l e g a t i o n s d e a l wi t h the Gupta family rather than Zuma — that the family “corruptly offered” Cabinet jobs and t hat t he Cabinet seemed awfully keen to get involved when major banks decided to deny service to the family and its business interests.
Along the way, though, Madonsela on Thursday sat across a table from Zuma to talk about those allegations and his relationship with the Gupta family, both their offices confirmed this week.
If history is any guide, both will be reluctant to discuss the content of the meeting before Madonsela officially reports on the matter, something she is determined to do, but could not guarantee would happen, by Friday October 14, the day before her term expires.
Whether or not she meets that deadline, though, and whenever the outcome becomes public, history also suggests Zuma could be in for a rough ride.
In the last half of 2013, things were going pretty well for him. Late the previous year Zuma had told Parliament that he and his family had paid for all the upgrades to their homes at Nkandla and, because of pervasive secrecy, nobody could prove any different.
A few months later a government department released an “investigation report” that exonerated Zuma.
“Allegations that the president had used state resources to build or upgrade his personal dwellings are unfounded,” said Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi.
Then, on August 11 2013, Zuma met Madonsela and made a terrible mistake.
We d o n o t k n o w w h e t h e r Madonsela, the advocate, cornered Zuma into making the admission, or whether he thoughtlessly offered it of his own volition. We know only, in paraphrased fashion, what he said.
“He indicated that he requested the building of the kraal as the number of his cattle had increased,” Madonsela later wrote in her turning-point report on Nkandla.
“He also stated that he would be willing to refund the state for the cost incurred in this regard.”
In one injudicious comment, Zuma had shattered the official line: that he had never asked for any of the improvements the state implemented at Nkandla, and could not be held responsible for payment on work that had in effect been done behind his back.
Factually, it made little difference. Madonsela, and later the Constitutional Court, held Zuma responsible for part of the Nkandla expenditure because of what he should have known and what he should have done — and how he benefited.
What he knew and when he knew it made little difference. But politically it was a bombshell.
“He lied to us,” a member of the ANC executive told the Guardian much later. “He told us he didn’t know. And we defended him.”
The sense of betrayal did not