Zuma is trying to deploy Africa’s old ‘liberation handcuffs’ defence
Participation in the struggle does not provide absolution for wrongdoing in power
● Jacob Zuma is a master of the non sequitur. He possesses a supreme ability to connect completely unrelated events, and make them seem like they are part of the same narrative. This past week he told the commission of inquiry into state capture that he could not have done anything wrong in 2019 because he was persecuted by apartheid and Western intelligence agencies in 1990. These agencies even sought to assassinate him by planting a suicide bomber in a packed stadium concert. He was saved only by his instincts, and stayed away from the concert. Madiba give way, Msholozi is the real Pimpernel.
He alleges that at the insistence of these agencies he was removed from the position of chief of intelligence. What he fails to reveal is the perfectly legitimate reason that the ANC would not have its deputy secretary-general also acting as its chief of intelligence. That would be a recipe for disaster for the organisation.
What such decades-old persecution may have to do with Zuma’s decisions as head of state may be baffling to the uninitiated, but such tropes have been the stuff of African politics for decades. Since Kwame Nkrumah’s accession to an independent Ghana in 1957, African heads of state have sustained themselves in power using the same storyline. Like Zuma, they did nothing wrong because they were persecuted during the anti-colonial struggle. Think Mugabe, Dos Santos and Nkrumah himself. The writer Mothobi Motloatse once argued that by using struggle credentials to absolve themselves of wrongdoing these leaders were placing African people in “liberation handcuffs”.
Julius Nyerere is about the only one of the lot who never engaged in such subterfuge. I once had the great privilege of hosting him at a workshop where he openly admitted his mistakes, which had nothing to do with his persecution by colonialists. “The only thing I can do is make confessions,” he said. “I ceased to be the leader of the people of Tanzania the moment I walked into government. I became the leader of a corrupt bureaucracy.”
There are reasons Zuma’s non sequiturs work, but also why they are increasingly unconvincing. They work because they are based on some element of truth. By telling the nation that he had prima facie evidence to prosecute Zuma but would not do so, then director of national prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka effectively nailed him in the court of public opinion. Where the rule of law obtains, it is not enough that we should believe that a person is guilty of a crime. Even the worst offenders are entitled to the due process of law. No-one among us would want to live in a country where prosecutions are politically motivated.
There is a lesson in this for all of us. Given one-party dominance of the legislature and the executive branches of government, the judiciary is about the only bulwark we have against political rampokkery (Afrikaans for racketeering).
The second reason Zuma’s non sequiturs appeal to his followers is that we live in a country in which millions of people are still mired in poverty — and are uneducated. In such an environment it is easy for tropes of victimhood to take hold. The populist hero dresses himself in the garb of the underdog — and thus appears to be at one with the people. He points to the educated elite — izifundiswa — as the real enemies of the people.
In a newspaper column I wrote 14 years ago, “Four questions about Zuma’s ability to lead” (Business Day, March 10 2005), I argued that Zuma’s presidential legacy would rest on the following questions. First, was his corruption congenital or a mere lapse of judgment? If it was congenital, then “we definitely don’t want him as our president”. Well, go figure, starting with Nkandla. Are we also to believe that constructing a R300m boondoggle in the middle of poverty also had something to do with persecution by apartheid and Western intelligence agencies?
The second question I raised was whether Zuma would emerge from the gruelling succession race against Thabo Mbeki without any bitterness. As I put it: “A bitter Zuma would lead to even greater degrees of polarisation than we currently have, both within the ANC and the country at large.” The real test was whether he would be able to separate his personal feelings about perceived or real “enemies” from the task of leadership. Clearly not, if his testimony at the commission is anything to go by.
The third question I raised was whether he would be able to extricate himself from his financiers: “The Schabir Shaik trial shows a picture of someone beholden to his financiers, but can he change and overcome that weakness, if it is indeed proven to be a weakness? This is important given the multiple interest groups that, in one way or another, seek access to the highest office in the land.” The Guptas did not only seek access, they controlled it.
Finally, would the lack of a formal education compromise Zuma’s sense of judgment?
In his testimony he demonstrated the very same sense of victimhood, bitterness and lack of selfawareness I had worried about. And that brings me to the reasons Zuma’s non sequiturs will no longer work. The first and most obvious is that he has been given too many chances — and now seems to have come to the end of the road. The second is a change in the political culture. The younger generation of South Africans is less willing to place itself in “liberation handcuffs”. A few decades ago it may have worked to accuse someone of being a “sellout” or a “spy” but that is no longer enough to pull the wool over the nation’s eyes. Even if Ngoako Ramatlhodi had been a “spy”, what does that have to do with the price of milk?
And can Zuma explain why he would have withheld such vital information from the ANC when
Ramathlodi rose to become Oliver Tambo’s speechwriter. Whose interests would he have been serving by withholding such information from the ANC as Ramatholdi penetrated the party’s innermost sanctums? The Pandora’s Box of calling people spies is that what one raises about others can also be raised about oneself. And before we know it we are in a spiral of mutual suspicion and destruction.
Unfortunately for the master of the nonsequitur, a growing number of South Africans are able to walk and chew gum at the same time. They are able to acknowledge past injustices while holding leaders accountable for present wrongdoing. The decline in electoral support for the ANC is evidence that it is no longer the people who must adapt to the party, but the party that must adapt to the people. Zuma’s non sequitur is a metaphor for the old politics of a few kleptocrats who ran African countries as personal fiefdoms. The rejection of such politics by young people is a glimmering hope of a renascent Africa.