FRANK CHIKANE MUST KNOW ONE THING: ZUMA'S FIRING WAS PAINFUL TOO

The day before he was fired then Deputy President Zuma was impeccably dressed in a sky blue linen suit showing no signs of distress. He looked relaxed and charming as usual. He fielded questions from Xolani Gwala on Asikhulume with ease. But deep inside, the man was hurting. Thabo Mbeki was to fire him the next day.

Earlier in the day he had addressed a Provincial Cosatu Shopstewards Council together with Willie Madisha at Coastlands Hotel in Durban, disrupting our ANC ward 26 BGM which sat in the same Hotel as we abandoned it rushing to see Zuma. Even there, our Deputy President seemed jolly, singing Mshiniwam, joking and laughing. None of us knew that a knife had already been plunged deep into his heart by a man who was once his best friend and brother as he considered Govan Mbeki his father as well, as he himself puts it.

During that week of endless speculation, Mbeki was outside the country. But just four days before firing JZ, these comrades were together in Parliament on the occasion of the retirement of Justice Arthur Chaskalson. Our eyes stared at the two comrades, hoping to find a hint of uneasiness between them: nothing. They were all smiles.

Rumours of Zuma's possible firing had been doing the rounds for a month since Judge Hillary Squires handed down his judgment in the Shaik trial. For some reason, none of us believed Mbeki could be that cruel. Having been our President for the past 8 years in the ANC, clearly, we still knew nothing about the man as the next few days proved.

On Monday, June 14, JZ was fired. Mbeki's reasoning hid behind a false statement that Judge Squires "made findings against the accused and at the same time pronounced on how these matters relate to our Deputy President, the Hon Jacob Zuma". Squires made no such statement, but Mbeki had no qualms using this false statement as his feeble excuse.

Actually, the judge had made himself clear, corruption is a bilateral affair, and the absence of Zuma had hamstrung him in making a complete judgment and thus he could not find as had been alleged by the Prosecution that there "was a generally corrupt relationship" between the two: JZ and Shaik.

Content never to allow the truth to take the place of a good story, newspapers rushed to print and said the judge, actually, found that there was indeed a "generally corrupt relationship" between Shaik and Zuma. This clap-trap was to do the rounds for years until Judge Squires himself decided to write a letter to Business Day's sister newspaper the now defunct "Weekender" correcting this.

Now we know Mbeki made his decision on the basis of a newspaper article. But he did not tell this to Parliament. Instead he lied and said he had studied the court ruling: "I have since carefully studied the Judgment." If he did, he may have done so with his eyes closed.

Soon after he was fired, President Zuma was charged with corruption. His house was raided by armed investigators in the wee hours of the morning, waking up a 63 year old man to search his house. No sooner was that finished, he was accused of rape, dragged to court to answer what was later concluded by a court of law to have been a spurious allegation.

In the middle of his rape trial, we had invited him to address our SRC inauguration in DUT. He looked terrible. The Jacob Zuma we had seen on Asikhulume almost 9 months back who was jolly and happy, was still happy, but his health had deteriorated. His smile was no longer believable. The man was in pain. Neither his smile no jovial character could hide that.

The treatment he was receiving at the hands of his old comrades had taken a toll on him. I felt for the man, but could do nothing but express my support. He asked around for donations like a pauper. No human must ever go through that.

The insider that he has always been, Frank Chikane should care to tell the public about how JZ was humiliated. And since he seems to be in the know of so much, he must also tell us why? The fact that our honoured cleric finds no reason to write about this exposes his biasness.

Lazola Ndamase is a member of the ANC and works in the Ministry of Communications

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