Splitting hairs as Zuma drags SA into the abyss
South Africa -- and the ANC -- deserve a far better president than the incumbent, writes Xolela Mangcu
JACOB Zuma should resign. That would free his party of a presidential candidate who is more a liability than an asset. Otherwise, the ANC is going to spend the next six weeks explaining away Nkandla — as his government ministers have vainly started to do.
The party should just cut its losses, lick its wounds and put up a candidate with a modicum of credibility.
That could translate to temporary confusion and the loss of some supporters — but, depending on what remedial action the ANC takes, it could be the basis for future rejuvenation. The Indian Congress Party, whose popularity has waxed and waned over the past 60 years, is a useful study in this regard.
But it is to Nkandla that I must return.
If the ANC could fire Thabo Mbeki for manipulating state institutions for political reasons, the case for firing Zuma is so much stronger. The legal reasons are plentiful, but I should like to highlight a handful of political ones.
First, public protector Thuli Madonsela found that Zuma had failed to protect the resources of South Africa from misuse even as he knew that the costs of the project were escalating.
How does a project that starts at R27-million rise to R65-million and then to R215-million
The trouble is that you and I keep putting them there by the way we vote
without anybody knowing, let alone the president? As one official reportedly put it: “We started from humble beginnings to establish a township.”
What a cruel joke on township residents, whose resources were illegally diverted to construct what Madonsela correctly described as “opulence on a grand scale” for one individual.
In sociology, we describe Zuma’s rule as prebendal authority — there is no distinction between the resources of the state and those of the individual leader.
What is even more damning is Madonsela’s reference to a Constitutional Court ruling that a public functionary is dutybound to act on any suspicion of wrongdoing.
Not our Zuma. Nothing would stir him to action — not even repeated newspaper reports.
Second, this is not the first time Zuma has been accused of failing to apply his mind.
The Supreme Court of Appeal found that he had failed to apply his mind in his appointment of Menzi Simelane as national director of public prosecutions.
Should it not have crossed his mind that there was something wrong with the appointment of his private architect as the principal agent on a state project?
As Madonsela pointed out, even if there was a need for coordination between the inner and the outer perimeter of the home, security experts could have consulted the architect from time to time.
The president’s personal architect, hired on a percentage basis, kept making additions to the project — increasing his earnings from R400 000 to R16-million. What a country.
Is it not stretching the bounds of credulity to argue that the president did not know that a whole community adjacent to his home had been removed?
How do you wake up one fine morning, find that your long-term neighbours are not there, and not raise questions about it — especially when you are head of state?
If the president cannot apply his mind to matters pertaining to his own residence, how can he possibly apply his mind to matters of state?
Third, a culture of lawlessness has taken hold under Zuma’s presidency of the ANC and the government. People caught with their hands deep in the till have been sent back to parliament despite their being rebuked by the party’s own parliamentary representatives.
Can there be a greater insult to our intelligence than Minister of Public Works Thulas Nxesi’s assertion that the swimming pool was a “fire pool”? What do you take us for, chief?
Fourth, Madonsela asked a question I have been asking myself ever since Zuma became president. Why all these exaggerated concerns about his security? Why would Zuma need a medical facility, a police station and a bunker at his home when neither Mbeki nor Nelson Mandela had any need for one?
What will happen to all these resources after Zuma dies?
Will they pass to his children and his wives, perhaps? In that case, who will be responsible for their “lifelong maintenance?”
Have we so lost our senses as a country that we cannot see this wrong for what it blatantly is?
Madonsela’s finest moment came when she “directed” the president to appear before parliament within the next 14 days.
By law, the president must account to parliament and he is definitely not above the judiciary.
Memories of Mandela came gushing over me when she said: “We do not make the laws, we are keepers of the laws.” Mandela always obeyed the instructions of these other institutions, even when they ruled against him.
In their wisdom, our founding fathers crafted a constitution and created institutions that anticipated the kind of malfeasance identified by Madonsela.
It is these institutions that stand between us and kleptocracy.
Madonsela cut Zuma some slack by saying his utterance to parliament — that his family built Nkandla — was “not true”, stopping short of saying he lied to parliament. What is the difference between saying something “not true” and lying?
But is this not the entire edifice upon which Zuma’s presidency is based — a continual splitting of hairs?
How long can this be sustained before irreversible damage is done to the moral fabric of our society?
We have not seen the end of this debacle, as investigators try to get to the bottom of the question: What did the president know and when did he know it?
Madonsela’s most profound message, though, was that those who seek to undermine her authority do not deserve to be in public office in the first place.
The trouble, of course, is that you and I keep putting them there by the way we vote.
It is time to send the ANC a message by voting against it in the next elections — unless it presents us with a candidate we deserve.
With the tales of corruption under Zuma’s rule, anyone else becomes appealing. Whatever choices we make, putting Zuma back in that office would be condoning his actions. It is as simple as all that.
Mangcu is associate professor of sociology at the University of Cape Town