Zuma cronies will defy national sentiment  

4 April 2016

President Nelson Mandela was a statesman of iconic stature. His powers lay in his keen astuteness as a lawyer, innate understanding of statecraft and his unique ability to phrase complex issues in Universalist language. In 1993, addressing a Cosatu Conference, he offered the ultimate solution to the gross misuse of state power: “If the ANC does to you what the Apartheid government did to you, then you must do to the ANC what you did to the Apartheid government.” There was no moral obfuscation. His message was clear and powerful. For Mandela, whatever was morally impermissible, was  politically and legally unacceptable. He was guided by an unfaltering moral compass and he therefore led the ANC to the pinnacle of its glory.

Zuma, at the other end of the scale, is offering a master class in how to make the impermissible, permissible. To Zuma, whatever is morally, politically and legally impermissible is only a hurdle to be easily leapt over. He has been offering ANC politicians a master class in how to mount a successful bloodless coup. Not for Zuma the mess of spilling blood to stay on the throne. Sucking the blood of the nation by stealth has been his specialty.

As Justice Malala pointed out today in his column in The Times, Zuma’s “greatest coup has been to capture the ANC”. Once he had ousted Thabo Mbeki, and captured the ANC, he rapidly “packed all the ANC bodies that can recall him with his own cronies” and then proceeded to castrate “the capabilities of our security agencies by appointing cronies to top jobs”. From that point the way was open for Zuma to enrich himself and to giggle uncontrollably at his cunning foxiness.

Whoever succeeds him as President will have learnt the necessity of keeping the Premier League onside and recognise the importance of allowing all the ‘patronage networks’, as Jan-Jan Joubert calls them, to remain unfettered and shielded.

The “patronage networks” have seen cronies becoming instant billionaires. Now that he is obliged to pay back the Nkandla money, the “patronage networks” will be very handy for Zuma. They will serve as his personal ATM to draw cash from.

As affluence and wealth spreads in the top echelons of the ANC, the object of political power will be to keep the rich getting richer without any sweat. Greed has gotten out of control. Patronage is the order of the day in the ruling party.

Many MPs who sit on the ANC benches today previously belonged to UDM and COPE. They held very different convictions before; but the Zuma patronage has caused their moral sense to atrophy. Feeding at the trough is all that is important in the ranks of the ruling party. Service delivery has gone to the dogs. They are all, so to speak, as thick as thieves. 

The solution is for the nation to press for urgent electoral reform. Henceforth, the President and other executive leaders in other spheres of government must be elected by citizens directly. Furthermore, MPs must be made directly answerable to voters, not to be malleable clay in the hands of a manipulative President or a powerful member of the executive. The right to recall must also be written into the Constitution. Finally, disclosure of political party funding must be made compulsory by statute. Doing the above is the high way that South Africa can choose.

The new ANC way is the low way to bankruptcy and a failed state. We must all reject that. 

Issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE Spokesperson, 4 April 2016