Peter Fabricius
President Jacob Zuma’s foreign policy seems to be becoming more secretive. We saw that recently when his office would at first neither confirm or deny that he had opened a weapons factory, jointly owned by the South African arms parastatal Denel and the Saudis, on his state visit to Saudi Arabia last month.
It was only when DA leader Mmusi Maimane posted a photo of Zuma at the opening ceremony that the Presidency grudgingly acknowledged it. Why the secrecy? Was he trying to hide South Africa’s closer ties with the Saudis from the Iranians – Saudi Arabia’s arch-enemies in the Middle East and historically the ANC's greater allies?
He was soon to visit Iran, too, and there were perhaps some regional sensitivities to be circumnavigated. But since his Gupta business cronies had just entered a controversial joint venture with Denel to manufacture steel products for defence, mining, rail and transport industries, the secrecy over the Saudi munitions venture was bound to arouse suspicion. And the Saudis had already announced the arms deal anyway.
It’s hard to avoid the impression that Zuma is conducting foreign policy on a need-to-know basis. And that the public doesn’t need to know.
On Friday, Zuma was in Swaziland – officially just to discuss with King Mswati proposed changes to the Southern African Customs Union agreement. But what his office failed to mention was that he would also be guest of honour at the king’s 48th birthday bash that evening.
There the two heads of state sang each other’s praises, according to Swazi journalists. Mswati commiserated with Zuma over his political woes back home and also advised South Africans to accept Zuma’a apology for the public money that was spent on non-security upgrades to his private residence Nkandla.
Zuma “glowed” at Mswati’s support, according to media reports of the event, then thanked him for his “wise words” and hoped “the whole of South Africa was listening and heard you very well".
Perhaps Zuma was experiencing a little absolute monarch envy. For, needless to say, anyone who disrupted the king’s speech in Parliament or anywhere else would be arrested immediately and locked up. The country has been under a state of emergency since 1973 when Mswati’s father, King Sobhuza, banned political parties.
Because Swaziland is not a democracy, the ANC has a policy of disapproval of the Mswati regime and has called on the South African government to put pressure on it to change its ways.
But that policy was clearly not evident at the birthday party where Zuma’s words and his body language evidently exuded implicit approval of his host.
Was this a problem? Is Zuma not entitled to have a casual and convivial off-duty moment with a fellow regional head of state and not share it with us? Wasn’t celebrating Mswati’s birthday a protocol obligation since Zuma was in Swaziland on official business anyway?
Yet it’s hard to imagine that the birthday party was just sprung on Zuma. He would have known about it before the dates for his visit were settled.
And Zuma did not travel to Swaziland on his own account. He went on the state purse and, when a South African head of state meets another head of state, that is implicitly, if not explicitly, state business.
He should be expressing the country’s position, not his own. Tacit approval of Mswati does not accurately represent even the ANC position, let alone the country’s.
Perhaps we are missing something here. Perhaps Zuma, while smiling and congenial with Mswati in public, took him severely to task in private, demanding that he unban political parties, lift the state of emergency and call multiparty elections for a new constitutional monarchy.
But does that seem plausible? Instead what seems to be happening here is that, as disapproval mounts against Zuma at home, he is drifting towards the pariah’s club, an unofficial support group for unpopular leaders.Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is, of course, a member already in very good standing.
And, as pressure mounts on him, Zuma is also showing some signs of taking a big leaf from his book. At a speech in Melmoth two weeks ago, Zuma urged blacks to vote en masse, to give the ANC the votes to expand and accelerate land restitution and to counter whites who were already voting in a group in pursuit of their own agendas.
He seemed to be suggesting that the ANC needed the votes to change the constitutional protection of property rights.
Playing the race card and the land card together like that ominously echoed the way Mugabe grabbed white farms in 2000 immediately after losing a constitutional referendum which was widely regarded as a test of his own public support.