Zuma, Ramaphosa and the ANC

By Gado Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

By Gado Cape Town, South Africa – APATHETIC MIDDLE CLASS TAKES TO THE STREETS

President Jacob Zuma is not going anywhere in a hurry. However, a number of South Africans are battling to understand why not.

As far as they are concerned, factions are rife in the ruling party, there are whispers and dark mutterings about private armies being recruited to defend party headquarters and to infiltrate opposition protests. There have been high-profile sackings from the Cabinet and resignations from parliament. As a result, a normally apathetic middle class has taken to the streets to demonstrate with opposition parties, trade unionists, senior members of the clergy and civil society.

These South Africans are also concerned about what they perceive as the securitisation of the state. The recently appointed police minister is talking about fighting fire with fire in his threats to those who dare protest against the state. The acting police commissioner is dismissive of court rulings allowing protests. There is open lawfare in the courts. Parliament is once more discussing a motion of no-confidence even though the ruling party’s numbers in the House mean it is at best a waste of effort.

Unhappy South Africans can see signs that that their economy is under attack, with international ratings agency after agency giving the country the thumbs down. This middle class coalition of black and white South Africans is hurting and are upset by the stories they read in their newspapers, magazines, see on TV and hear on their favourite talk radio stations about the perceived influence of the shadowy Gupta family in affairs of state.

The recently appointed police minister is talking about fighting fire with fire in his threats to those who dare protest against the state. The acting police commissioner is dismissive of court rulings allowing protests They are up in arms that a recent reshuffle saw the well-liked finance minister Pravin Gordhan fired and as a direct result the country’s credit rating was revised to ‘junk’ status – meaning hard times lie ahead.

Furthermore, these people are upset that last year, the president was found by the Constitutional Court to have failed to uphold the Constitution.

Meanwhile, the president at the centre of all the dissension and intrigue appears unmoved, unimpressed and unamused as he chuckles and pushes his spectacles higher up on the bridge of his nose using his middle finger. In fact if anything the president is digging in his heels, whipping up sympathy in his substantial constituency of diehard supporters, among whom are the majority of South Africans who make up the grassroots of this democracy. He is also reliant on a top political leadership from with his ruling party that seems unable or unwilling to take him on, in any meaningful way.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a fly on the wall of the presidency were to report that President Jacob Zuma, in the manner of Effie White – the character from the Broadway musical and film, Dreamgirls, who refuses to accept that her relationship with her boyfriend is on the rocks – was defiantly humming ‘And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going’ to himself in response to the chants of ‘Zuma must go’ coming from the street protestors.

THE FIRST REAL AFRICAN BIG MAN SINCE 1994

If anyone bothered to ask them, many from north of the Limpopo – that place that some South Africans like to refer to as ‘Africa’ as if it were not the same landmass that they live on – could tell these angry, increasingly vocal middle-class South Africans protesting Zuma’s continued reign that in fact what they are experiencing is their first real African Big Man as president since the dawn of democracy in 1994.

The much revered Nelson Mandela was the country’s first black president. He remains a world icon loved and admired by his people and the world. Most importantly he relinquished power after only one term, even though, had he wished to, he could have had a second.

Mandela’s chosen successor, Thabo Mbeki was renowned as an intellectual who popularised the African Renaissance idea in his famous ‘I am an African’ speech. However, he displayed very ‘un- African’ tendencies by not fighting tooth and nail to cling to power when he was challenged by his former deputy. Mbeki was just not cut out to be an African Big Man.

Thabo Mbeki was renowned as an intellectual who popularised the African Renaissance idea. However, he displayed very ‘un-African’ tendencies by not fighting tooth and nail to cling to power when he was challenged by his former deputy. Mbeki was just not cut out to be an African Big Man

Mbeki was briefly succeeded by Kgalema Motlanthe. Aware he was a stop-gap, Motlanthe served as South Africa’s president for only six months, during the ANC’s most tumultuous period in post- apartheid South Africa – the recalling of President Mbeki by the ANC in 2008. Motlanthe could have done the African Big Man thing and swindled President Zuma out of the top job, but instead gave in to the party’s wishes and made way for the man who had engineered Mbeki’s downfall.

Jacob Zuma arrived in office a heroic veteran of the struggle against apartheid. He had also been Mbeki’s deputy and was seen by his supporters and others on the SA political scene as a man more sinned against than sinning. This, despite a series of scandals that would have ended the careers of many politicians.

In fact, it would appear that what some have described as Zuma’s ‘charisma and strength in adversity’ helped buoy him up during his first years in office. To quote the Kenyan teacher, actor and journalist John Sibi-Okumu, who was writing elsewhere on the subject of the African Big Man, ‘The overriding thesis is that the goodies transmogrify themselves into baddies, mainly courtesy of external influence driven by the desire to pillage our considerable resources.’

Today this same ‘charisma and strength in adversity’ continues to attract supporters to Zuma from the ANC grassroots and give the president comfort in the knowledge that the majority of the people are still with him.

The numbers don’t lie – at the last test of Zuma and his party’s popularity, the 2016 local government elections, the ANC was the largest party overall, earning 53.9% of the total vote. The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, had 26.9% and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters party garnered 8.2% of the vote.

‘Don’t be scared of them [the opposition parties who have recently been turning up the pressure his presidency] when you see them marching saying Zuma must go… But what has Zuma done?’

These numbers and the way the ruling ANC is run plus the party’s dominance of parliament where at the 2014 general election the ANC acquired 249 out of a total 400 seats are what give Zuma the confidence to say – to loud cheers from the audience by the way, as he did during his 75th birthday celebrations on April 12 this year, ‘Don’t be scared of them [the opposition parties who have recently been turning up the pressure his presidency] when you see them marching saying Zuma must go… But what has Zuma done?’

This is the classic African Big Man stance that sticks in the craw of the country’s middle classes who fill the airwaves on talk radio stations and letters to the editor columns in the serious newspapers around the country calling on President Zuma to ‘do the right thing’ and resign.

THE BIG MAN’S QUINTESSENTIAL TOOL – THE APPOINTMENT OF CRONIES

One of the ways that President Zuma has cemented his grip on office has been by using the quintessential tool in the Big Man’s bag of tricks to cling onto power – the appointment of cronies to the various institutions including parliament, where he has carte blanche.

According to observers and analysts, over the past few years, Zuma has used cadre deployment to his advantage, packing the security services, the public service including parliament, and of course the ANC itself, with loyalist cronies who will support him with their last breath.

At the same time, members of Zuma’s family have amassed vast personal fortunes reportedly through corrupt deals using their family connection to the Big Man.

This centralisation and personalisation of power is being seen to have gradually laid the foundation for the edifice that President Zuma presides over. It is in its way no different from what other Big Men have done through the history of the continent. The likes of Mobutu, Moi, Mubarak, Mugabe and Museveni – to name a few – relied on such patronage and loyalty to ensure their grip on power. The next big set piece in the battle to remove Zuma or shame him into quitting is yet another parliamentary vote of no-confidence, now set for May. The last motion of no confidence against Zuma, tabled in November 2016, failed when 216 voted against it and 126 MPs voted in its favour.

The likes of Mobutu, Moi, Mubarak, Mugabe and Museveni – to name a few – relied on patronage and loyalty to ensure their grip on power

In the past few years, there have been a number of failed parliamentary votes of no-confidence against President Zuma. Serious political analysts know that the system as it stands today is designed in such a way that makes it impossible for these votes to succeed unless the members of the majority party in parliament rebel en masse and vote with the opposition. As long as the ANC’s rules govern how its MPs behave in parliament, this is unlikely to happen. Zuma will win again.

The South African proportional representation electoral system works in the following manner: Voters vote for a political party, not individuals. The political party then gets a share of seats in parliament in direct proportion to the number of votes it got in the election. Each party then decides on members to fill the seats it has won.

Professor Ben Turok, an ANC stalwart, anti-apartheid activist, economics professor and former South African MP, explained the reasons for Zuma’s confidence during a recent radio interview on the Eusebius Mackaiser show on CapeTalk 567 that featured a discussion on ‘yet another upcoming parliamentary vote of no-confidence against the president.’

Prof Turok said, ‘I think you people [the media] are raising a red herring. We have been down this road [motions of no-confidence in Zuma] quite a few times and in every case, the caucus of the ANC meets and discusses it, and takes a decision and all members are bound by that decision. If you do not follow that decision you will lose your job. It’s as simple as that. So why is there so much speculation about whether people are going to break ranks?’

‘Within the ANC there are many whose conscience is bothering them a great deal and would love to vote against Zuma, but they can’t and will not’

Turok added that hopes for a successful rebellion by ANC MPs against Zuma were unrealistic, ‘I know that within the ANC there are many whose conscience is bothering them a great deal and would love to vote against Zuma, but they can’t and will not.’

A FEW VOICES SPEAKING OUT

Indeed there have been a few voices from within the parliamentary ANC speaking out against Zuma. For instance, ANC MP Makhosi Khoza, chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Service And Administration, recently broke ranks with a scathing critique of how ‘the politics of patronage has claimed the sanity’ of her party’s leaders. In an interview with the Times newspaper she said the ANC had to fix its internal problems before 2019 or face a heavy defeat at the polls.

Reminded that a number of MPs could pursue careers out of parliament if they lost their seats, Turok averred that the reality was a political zero sum game and just simply crossing the floor as in some other parliamentary democracies was impossible in the South African system. He said that while it is true that a number of ANC MPs have professions and other options to fall back on, and here he gave himself as an example (he resigned from parliament to return to academia) the only thing that would change the current situation was if for instance the EFF were to double its vote in the national election, thus gaining 20 seats to offer rebels.

Those who constantly undermine Zuma forget one thing. He is trained in sabotage, having been recruited into Umkhonto we Sizwe, the militant arm of the ANC, in 1962 by a stalwart of the liberation struggle, the late Moses Mabhida

Those who constantly undermine Zuma forget one thing. He is trained in sabotage and if you are taking on the president you must keep in mind that he was recruited into Umkhonto we Sizwe, the militant arm of the ANC, in 1962 by a stalwart of the liberation struggle, the late Moses Mabhida, and participated in sabotage operations in KwaZulu-Natal. He then joined the South African Communist Party in 1963 and as a member received military training in the Soviet Union. He later joined the African National Congress Department of Intelligence where he was the head of intelligence.

Like any other African Big Man, President Zuma is not going to be forced to do anything he doesn’t want to do unless and until the anti-Zuma momentum builds up to become an unstoppable force. But then again, it is not as if the president will be standing by watching this happen without having a few tricks up his sleeve.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

Zuma, Ramaphosa and the ANC

By Gado Capetown, South Africa – Of all the controversies swirling round the figure of President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma aka Msholozi – his clan praise name – probably the best known and most discussed around South Africa is the issue of his super controversial Nkandla homestead.

More than the 783 corruption charges reinstated in April this year after the High Court in Pretoria found that the decision to drop the corruption charges back in 2009 was “irrational” and that they were as serious as the allegations of “state capture”– which is a type of systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state’s decision-making processes to their own advantage – the issue of Nkandla is the one that has contributed the most to what one media commentator referred to as President Zuma’sannishorribilis.

If you have only just returned from deep space, or have never heard of South Africa, Nkandla is the president’s private home in KwaZulu-Natal Province. It is controversial because public funds to the tune of over R246 million (about $17 million) were used to give the homestead an alleged security upgrade.

Among the “improvements” made to the South African president’s private home using taxpayer’s money were a helipad, underground bunkers, a chicken run and a swimming pool actually described as a ‘firepool’ – since, it was claimed, the pool was built as a source of water for firefighting

Among the “improvements” made to the home by the Ministry of Public Works using taxpayer’s money were: Security fencing around the whole compound, accommodation for the president’s security, a helipad, underground bunkers, a chicken run and most questionable of all, a swimming pool actually described as a ‘firepool’– since, it was claimed, the pool was built as a source of water for firefighting. Meanwhile, according to South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper, a dossier compiled by a former Public Works Department deputy director general (equivalent of an undersecretary), contained invoices showing that state money had been used to pay for things such as thatching, meranti (a rare wood) and aluminium doors and window frames, tiles, paint, plastering, air-conditioning and other unexplained extras.

South African law provides for a Ministerial Handbook that incorporates the Executive Code of Ethics and regulates probity in public life. According to this set of rules, the Public Works Ministry can spend up to R100,000 (about $7,000) on security upgrades to the private homes of state officials and anything more than that should come out of the official’s pocket.

A March 2014 report issued by South Africa’s immediate former public protector (ombudsman) Thuli Madonsela, whose term ended in September this year, found that the president had benefited unduly from these home improvements and on March 31, 2016, the Constitutional Court delivered a unanimous ruling stating that the president and the ANC-dominated parliament had failed to uphold the country’s Constitution by failing to comply with Madonsela’s report on the matter.

Facing calls to resign from prominent public figures and veteran ANC activists from Mandela’s Robben Island days, such as Ahmed Kathrada, Zuma appeared on national TV on April 1, 2016 and made an apology for using public money to fund his private residence.

APOLOGY FAILS TO MAKE THE STORY GO AWAY

But the story of Nkandla, now described by one commentator as ‘a monument to corruption,’ began in 2009 when a newly elected President Zuma, who has been reported to have been fairly impecunious at the time, decided to build a permanent rural home for his family. However it would take years for the scandal to mature fully.

Previously, in December 1997, during the African National Congress’s national conference held at Mafikeng, Zuma had been elected as the ANC’s deputy president. In 1999, he was appointed the deputy president of South Africa, a position he held until he was relieved of his duties by state president Thabo Mbeki in June 2005 pending his rape trial and allegations of racketeering and corruption.

The Madonsela report showed that the R246 million was eight times the money spent securing two private homes for South Africa’s first democratic president Nelson Mandela, and more than 1,000 times that spent on the home of FW de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid-era president

At this point –in the run-up to the 2009 election –observers had written off Zuma’s political career. Meanwhile Zuma’s supporters claimed their man’s legal problems were the result of political meddling by his rivals including president Mbeki. Proving he still had grassroots support, Zuma managed to garner enough votes in the ANC to propel him to be elected the party’s president in December 2007 at the national conference in Polokwane, Limpopo, polling 2,329 votes against Mbeki’s 1,505. Zuma’s supporters saw his charismatic popular touch as a refreshing contrast to Thabo Mbeki, who was seen as a rather aloof president.

He was acquitted of rape, butdespite the fact that he had always denied charges of money- laundering and racketeering, stemming from a controversial $5billion arms deal signed in 1999, the corruption cases against him proved harder to slip out of. Meanwhile, Mbeki continued to serve as the country’s president, but in September 2008, in the same month that the ANC NEC resolved to recall Thabo Mbeki as head of state, the graft cases against Zuma were controversially dropped by the National Prosecuting Authority just weeks before the elections that saw him become president. In the interim, Kgalema Mothlante, later Zuma’s deputy for one term, served as the third president of the Republic of South Africa.

A month after Zuma ascended to the presidency of the country – reports by investigative journalists Mandy Rossouw and Chris Roper in the Mail & Guardian newspaper pinpoint the date to between May 18 and 29 – a security assessment was carried out at Nkandla and by the end of August 2009, construction had begun.

The story of how Rossouw (who died in 2013) and Roper (who went on to become editor of the M&G) accidentally stumbled on the Nkandla story is now the stuff of legend among South African journalists.

Rossouw was out interviewing residents of the town of Nkandla about what it was like to have the president as a neighbour. With Roper she drove in November 2009 to the president’s residence to take some photos to illustrate the story and it was then that they noticed some construction and heavy earth-moving machinery. According to Roper in a piece he wrote after Rossouw’s death, ‘Mandy’s interest was piqued, and she inveigled our way into the site office, a small, meltingly hot prefab building with three car wrecks abandoned outside. There was our first evidence of the extent of what Nkandla was destined to become, both as a large complex and as a massive story: Architectural drawings taped to a wall, showing extensive development plans.’

Rossouw’s story reported that the expansion to the existing compound would cost the taxpayer R65 million (about $4.5 million). At the time, upgrades to the compound included a private military hospital and parking lot, a visitors centre, the helipad installation and, according to the M&G’s investigative report, a two-storey house and guest house.

Before they published the story, the journalists contacted the government for comment and the first reaction was evasiveness. Writes Roper: ‘Our conversation with them reads like a dress rehearsal for the following four years of obfuscation and spin.

Initially, the government said that it had no record of such a development and no hand in any of Zuma’s personal property endeavours. However, in a statement released just before the story was published, they changed their tune slightly, saying: ‘The Zuma family planned before the elections to extend the Nkandla residence, and this is being done at own cost. No government funding will be utilised for the construction work.’

History and the Public Protector’s investigation –which began after a series of complaints from the public and opposition parties about the misuse of state funds on the project were lodged with Madonsela’s office between December 2011 and December 2012 – have shown the government’s statements to have been economical with the truth.

In a more than 400-page report on Nkandla titled ‘Secure in Comfort.’ the Public Protector found the cost of the Nkandla upgrades were now estimated at R246 million (about $23 million) but that the original estimate for the work in 2009 had been about R27 million.

While there was never any proof that the president had made any decisions about spending himself, it would appear that those who were making the decisions were acting under the impression that they were doing his bidding.

Madonsela’s report said that while it could be ‘legitimately construed’ that President Zuma had misled parliament over the renovations and that this was a ‘bona fide mistake,’ on the whole the project was unlawful and constituted improper conduct and maladministration.

DE KLERK, THE MODEST PRESIDENT?

The report showed that the R246 million was eight times the money spent securing two private homes for South Africa’s first democratic president Nelson Mandela, and more than 1,000 times that spent on the home of FW de Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid-era president.

In the report’s executive summary, Madonsela wrote: “The president tacitly accepted the implementation of all measures at his residence and has unduly benefited from the enormous capital investment in the non-security installations at his private residence.”

Madonsela thus found that the president had acted in violation of the Ministerial Handbook, which would only have granted him R100,000 worth of security upgrades, and ordered the president to reimburse part of the expense

Before the report made its way into the public domain, the issue of Nkandla was probed, investigated and questioned in Parliament even to the point of an attempt to launch a vote of no- confidence against the president.

All the while, President Zuma and his supporters, who had decided to fight the report, repeatedly told parliament he used his own family funds to build his homestead. The public was told that the president had not ordered the improvements, had not been involved in the details, and had not unduly benefited from the work.

In the meantime, the Police Minister came out with his own report into what the press was now referring to as “Nkandlagate,” exonerating the president and seeming to absolve him of any liability – even setting aside Madonsela’s suggestion to pay back the money.

The president, his lawyers and the security cluster in the Cabinet, which is comprised of the Minister of Police, the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, the Minister of Home Affairs and the Minister of State Security, raised questions about the Public Protector’s conclusions and eventually took her to court in 2013 for not giving them enough time to study the report before it was released to the public.

For a while, it looked as though the Constitutional Court, where the matter eventually ended up, would rule in favour of the president. This view was driven by some observers who feared that Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng– who was appointed by the president in 2011 and initially thought to be close to him – would rule in his favour. However, any doubts were removed when the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the president’s failure to repay the money violated the Constitution.

In his ruling, the Chief Justice described the Public Protector as the biblical David who had gone against the mighty Goliath and emerged victorious.

The powerful Gupta family – an Indian-South African business family whose most notable members are the brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh “Tony” Gupta as well as Atul Gupta’s nephew Varun Gupta –have become notorious for their allegedly close relationship with the president Mogoeng said the Public Protector’s report and remedial actions had only been directed at Zuma and he had been expected to address the issues without any interference by the ANC-dominated National Assembly. He found that the president and the National Assembly had violated the Constitution by setting aside the Public Protector’s suggestions for remedial action. The judgment said that the president would have to personally pay the amount determined by the National Treasury.

After the Constitutional Court judgment, President Zuma went on national television and apologised to South Africans in an effort to draw a line under the long-running scandal. He said he would abide by a court ruling that he must repay government money spent on upgrading his rural home.

In June, the Treasury determined that the president should pay R7.8 million (about $550,000) for the non-security upgrades, after the Constitutional Court in March ordered Zuma to pay back some of the R248 million of state money spent upgrading his private home.

In September, in line with the court order issued in March, the president took a loan from a bank and paid off the R7.8 million for the non-security upgrades to his private Nkandla home. The amount he paid was calculated in line with 2009 prices, which is when the project started.

THEN ALONG CAME AJAY, ATUL, RAJ AND THE BOYS

If the president thought that the Nkandla matter would end and he would get some respite now that he had paid back the money, he was mistaken.

Controversies continue to dog his presidency from all sides; Thursday November 10, 2016, he survived yet another opposition-sponsored vote of no-confidence in Parliament.

Meanwhile, the news cycle is currently based on Thuli Madonsela’s final report as the Public Protector dealt with the burning issue of “state capture” – a type of systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state’s decision-making processes to their own advantage through unobvious channels, that may not be illegal.

In her sights with this report were the powerful Gupta family – an Indian-South African business family whose most notable members are the brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh “Tony” Gupta as well as Atul Gupta’s nephew Varun Gupta – who have become notorious for their allegedly close relationship with the president.

While every attack on the president is viewed by some as another nail in his coffin, his detractors would do well to remember that the president’s Zulu name is Gedleyihlekisa, which has been translated as ‘The one who smiles while grinding his enemies.’ President Zuma is not down and seems far from out.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.