Eusebius McKaiser
I am afraid, fellow South Africans, the sole conclusion that we can reach from the televised address from President Jacob Zuma on Friday night is that he takes each one of us to be a moegoe!
The man walks to the podium, and effectively pretends that he had always respected the office of the Public Protector, and that Thursday’s Constitutional Court judgment was innocuous, even claiming that the court basically was welcoming how the president had handled this matter, including the fact that, back when the public protector’s report was first released, the president was permitted to not comply while pursuing parallel processes to scrutinise her report.
Effectively the president tells us that his chosen path back then – not complying immediately with the remedial actions of the public protector – was correct in law, until the law was clarified, finally, on Thursday.
Look, besides taking no responsibility for violating the constitution, the president is pulling a fast one by pretending he had all along been deeply committed to, and rolemodelling, accepting constitutional supremacy. He is also simply lying about what exactly the Constitutional Court had found.
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng had made it clear that EVEN IF the president got faulty legal advice when he first considered the report of the public protector, “that does not detract from the illegality” of his failure to comply with her remedial actions.
Also, the Constitutional Court indicted both the National Assembly and the president when it tells us plainly “how the public protector’s remedial action was second-guessed in a manner that is not sanctioned by the rule of law”.
The court even went so far as to say that it is apparent that the ministerial report was taken by the president as a “vindication” of his – the president’s – view that he is “absolved of liability”.
This makes nonsense of the idea that there was no culpability on the part of the president in omitting his constitutional duties.
And, several times throughout this judgment, the court reiterated the fact that ONLY “a proper judicial process” could ever unbind the remedial recommendations of the public protector, rubbishing Zuma’s attempt to casually allege that no serious constitutional breach took place, just something like a minor, unintended error based on an acceptable lack of legal certainty.
Simply put: this president demonstrated an inability to fulfil his constitutional duty to safeguard the public purse, and to safeguard the Office of the Public Protector.
This, of course, is the result of personal benefit from non-security upgrades. He fell far short of the minimum criteria for decent leadership in the office of the president. But Zuma will come and go. All politicians do. Political parties and democratic institutions need to outlive them, if our society is to go from strength to strength.
And so, like many of us, I cared more for the press conference held just after the one by the president, the press conference called by the ANC.
What would they say? I wondered? Seeing WHAT the ANC will say, the nexus question for me then was, as I tuned into their television appearance, “Can the ANC chop the ugly head of impunity?”.
The answer became apparent within seconds of the secretary-general of the party, Gwede Mantashe, addressing the media.
“No” – they welcomed the non-apology of president Zuma, and pretended that recalling the president would lead to the ANC “tearing itself apart”.
All that confession really reveals is that incompetence (Exhibit A being president Zuma) is intrinsic to the ANC. Why else would recalling Zuma inherently imply the organisation tearing itself apart?
Surely that’s not a message the ANC should send out into the world of voters?
Parties the world over have leadership contests all the time and they do not literally lead to these parties tearing themselves apart. Even the Republic Party in the US will survive the idiocy of Donald Trump, for example.
So prospects of ugly leadership succession battles aren’t a bar to ousting a leader whose continued presence at the helm constitutes tearing apart both the ANC and our entire country.
Which is more important for the ANC: fearing a healthy succession battle now or watching the economy and democratic institutions being further bruised and battered due, in part, to the ruinous leadership of President Zuma?
It’s incredible that the ANC could deem someone like president Mbeki as inferior to the organisation (and mercifully so I hasten to add, not being a fan of those keen to revise Mbeki’s own unacceptable record on Aids denialism, jobless growth, the erosion of a democratic culture in the party and state, etc), and yet Zuma seems to be superior to this organisation that has existed for many decades before Zuma was even a zygote.
Is the ANC perhaps colluding with Zuma in his feeding at the trough because Zuma is acting out contemporary ANC values?