President Jacob Zuma can, in the phrase popularised by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992, claim the past year as his annus horribilis, writes Emsie Ferreira.
Cape Town – President Jacob Zuma can, in the phrase popularised by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992, claim the past year as his annus horribilis as the State capture narrative eclipsed the Nkandla scandal and drew open revolt in the ruling party.
The latter sees him go into 2017, not only burdened by another adverse Public Protector report and a court setback in the battle to evade corruption charges, but as somebody now mostly mentioned in the same breath as his fraught succession.
If Zuma’s almost incidental power struggle with Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan proves his slow undoing, December 9, 2014, may come to mark the beginning of the end. It was day he fired Nhlanhla Nene as finance minister, setting in motion the events that returned Gordhan to the helm of National Treasury, via four days of outrage and market carnage over his first choice of Des van Rooyen for the post.
On the facts, Gordhan holds the losing hand. The procurement of new nuclear reactors will go ahead, Tom Moyane and Dudu Myeni remain in charge at the South African Revenue Service and South African Airways respectively and the Financial Intelligence Centre Amendment Bill has been stalled by the president and sent back to Parliament.
But sympathy for Gordhan and fear for the economy has weakened Zuma, with his hitherto immutable line of defence, the African National Congress’ National Executive Committee, taking three days in late November to shut down a call from Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom for him to step down that, in the end, never went to the vote.
There was a hint that stalwarts were drifting from the ranks in March when Jackson Mthembu said of Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas’s bombshell claim that the Gupta family had offered him the job of finance minister: “I believe Comrade Jonas.”
Mthembu went on to become ANC chief whip and continued in that vein, voicing heartfelt support for Gordhan when National Director of Public Prosecutions Shaun Abrahams announced fraud charges against him on October 11.
Later that month, Mthembu told City Press the whole NEC should resign, four weeks before the NEC met and Hanekom tabled his motion.
Three months earlier, the NEC had shielded Zuma after a post mortem of the bruising August 3 local government elections. It accepted collective responsibility for losing control of three key metros, ignoring lone voices that said the party had suffered for not leaving Zuma to deal with the Nkandla abuse of State funds in isolation but deploying Parliament to absolve him.
In April, the Constitutional Court found that the president and the legislature had flouted the Constitution and ordered Zuma to obey Madonsela’s directive to pay for luxuries added to his rural home at state expense, in the final event R7.8 million.
The Economic Freedom Fighters, one of the applicants in the case, immediately followed up with claims that Zuma and his ministers were helping the Gupta family smuggle cash out of the country.
By then Jonas’s revelation had prompted the Democratic Alliance and a group of Catholic priests to lodge a complaint with Madonsela to investigate whether Zuma violated the Executive Ethics Code by allowing the Gupta brothers to dictate Cabinet appointments.
Zuma refused to answer Madonsela’s questions, a point she underscored by releasing both a transcript and, extraordinarily, an audio recording of their interview, and sought an interdict blocking the release of the report. As with Nkandla, he reversed tack in court, and the North Gauteng High Court ordered its release within hours, some six months after it set aside the 2009 decision to withdraw 783 criminal charges against him.
If her report was completed in a rush against the deadline of her term ending in November, Madonsela had the benefit of Treasury officials’ extensive scrutiny of Eskom’s coal contracts with the Gupta’s exploration business Tegeta.
In detail that included the cellphone records of departing Eskom CEO Brian Molefe, she found the utility, and Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane, had gone to great lengths to advance Tegeta’s interests to the detriment of rival Glencore.
In September, Zwane had shocked Cabinet colleagues by claiming the collective had approved a sweeping judicial inquiry into four banks’ decision to close the Guptas’s accounts, extending to whether National Treasury had abused its powers.
Some analysts read it as a sign that Zuma was helpless to intervene as the family ordered his ministers around, left only to hope that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa might cry halt. But his final appearance in Parliament for the year undermined the theory as the president, despite saying he had reprimanded Zwane, backed an inquiry, telling MPs it was justified to probe the banks as their actions suggested collusion and could scare off foreign investors.
In the same question session, Zuma swatted away questions about the State capture report — apart from complaining that Madonsela had shown him “no fairness” — on the basis that it was sub judice as he was launching a court challenge, filed on December 3.
If Zuma ends the year in defiant mode with a minority mutiny contained, its consequences will include a special consultative party conference in July at the behest of ANC veterans who want him to step down. Six months later the ANC will hold its 54th elective conference to choose its next leader. Deputy President Cyril Ramamphosa has broken his silence, both on infighting, warning of a government at war with itself, and on his future plans, declaring his candidacy last week.
The danger for Zuma is that the push back against his perceived excesses in the unfolding story of patronage networks dictating state spending, has eroded his power to determine the ANC’s choice of party president and will see him serve out his presidential term in perpetual unease, dodging the fate of early recall he visited on Thabo Mbeki.
African News Agency