President Jacob Zuma responded to the State of the Nation address debate with attempts to throw the opposition off-balance, writes Susan Booysen.
Johannesburg - There were two Jacob Zumas in Parliament on Thursday. The “broken man” was the elephant in the room while the president delivered his State of the Nation response.
Mega-strategy had been employed to set the stage and let the president look presidential, innocent of breaking democratic institutions to fix his legal predicaments, distanced from Nkandla and free to play the opposition parties.
The Gedleyihlekisa troops had been working flat out since that fateful State of the Nation address evening a mere week earlier.
On Thursday morning the pieces were falling into place. The hehehe president was set to pounce and change the ANC’s disconcerting balance of forces back to an equilibrium where the ANC would not be embarrassed in full view of the world. But did he?
It is illuminating to dissect the strategy that had President Zuma transform from DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s extraordinary “broken man” speech of Tuesday to a decorous leader in Thursday’s State of the Nation address wind-up. It sheds light on how a leader like Zuma can remain in place, even if the Teflon is damaged.
Nineteenth-century Russian author Feodor Dostoyevsky said: “If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know the man, don’t bother analysing his ways of being silent, of talking… of weeping, or seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas. You’ll get better results if you just watch him laugh.”
It is unclear whether President Zuma is set to have the last laugh, but his repertoire of giggles had virtually dried up on Thursday – until he started playing cat-and-mouse with opposition parties, reaching out to Afrikaners represented by the Freedom Front Plus, and patronising (some said complimenting) the leaders of the EFF, IFP and Cope.
The master of divide-and-rule, embarrass-and-endorse worked through targeted parties. He probably chuckled silently at how the ANC propaganda of the destabilisation of Parliament and the need to defend democracy had put opposition parties in limbo.
But these are the final phases of this week’s display of Zuma strategy. The lead-in was phenomenal, extensive and deadly. He had the full state force behind him. That is the name of the Zuma power game: there was no dissent of note in the close-knit circle of forces required to protect the president. Those who matter did not hesitate to construct the firewall around the president and allude to fall officials. The “broken man” limped into the arena, but he was covered on all flanks.
The ANC and its president were on the back foot after being literally caught out in the signal and white shirts scandal of the State of the Nation address evening. The opposition parties, and specifically the DA, reinforced the humiliation in Tuesday’s debate.
The EFF, after having been roughed up by Zuma’s “white shirts”, seemed strangely subdued, perhaps due more than merely to the effects of pressing legal charges and the sub judice rule.
The state leg of the counteroffensive kicked in next. The stage was being secured for the president’s return. The 24-hour slot from Wednesday to Thursday morning revealed why Zuma still had a little arsenal of giggles in stock – he was in control, his troops were rallying, and following the previous week’s catharsis, Nkandla for now was a virtual no-go territory:
l Minister of State Security David Mahlobo and the state security cluster explained why “Signalgate” could be put down to a “glitch” and human error. Of course, it was an official who had been at fault. The error will now be investigated “internally”. Mahlobo refused to place responsibility in the court of the political executive.
l The minister of defence helped explain the mysterious “threat” that had necessitated the State Security Agency’s special measures. Woolly explanations hinted at terrorism and even international threat, but in the end it appeared that the EFF was the threat: “There was a threat, a threat to disrupt Parliament.” After all, what could be a greater scare to the inner circle than an embarrassment of the Great Leader?
* In a step to shore up the balance of forces, political pest control moved in. Speaker Baleka Mbete apologised for her cockroach-speak against the EFF’s Julius Malema. Malema accepted and reciprocated in relation to the DA’s Helen Zille.
* To square the circle, the cabinet released a statement that “condemns the unruly and unparliamentary conduct of some MPs during the opening of Parliament”. (Lack of respect for Parliament through lack of leaders’ accountability does not exist in the cabinet’s vocabulary.)
The stage was set and Zuma entered Parliament, looking up occasionally from his prepared speech. There was minimal smiling and gesturing. He seemed to light up on recognising the chance to make new parliamentary friends using the Mandela formula of outreach and reconciliation.
There was no hint of Zuma’s assuming responsibility for in effect plunging Parliament into malfunction by denying it the respect of accountability and then with the signal and white shirts scandal.
His speech dripped with redistributed responsibility: “We all have the responsibility to make Parliament work”, “We need to preserve the dignity of Parliament”, “We have the responsibility to protect the constitution”, “We reconfirm the government’s commitment to the constitution”, and the signal blocking “should never happen again”.
The invasion of Parliament by security forces was not referred to by name.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe bolstered the Zuma volley, focusing on “disruption by some” MPs, ignoring that lack of accountability triggered it.
Thus Zuma’s rejoinder continued the narrative of threat to democracy by raucous opposition. There was no recognition of praise-singing and deference to the “unadulterated leader” as a threat to parliamentary accountability. Of course not. The security cluster briefing and Zuma’s speech echoed the pre-State of the Nation address narratives of the EFF as the threat to parliamentary democracy.
Zuma appeared confident of constructing white-shirt parliamentary violence as indispensable to containing “violence directed at overthrowing the constitutional order of the republic”, to use the words of the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Act of 2013.
However, the EFF threat to Zuma subsided as the DA and Maimane threat rose. Zuma meshed his speech with liberation themes, knowing the DA could not compete. He used divide-and-rule against the opposition parties. He tried to derail the DA by avoiding the bearer of the “broken man, broken institutions” message, except for saying: “If someone calls me a dog there is something wrong with them, not me. I know I am not a dog, I am Gedleyihlekisa… Soccer players say ‘play the ball and not the man’.”
ANC backbenchers had already tried to deflect the “broken” to the DA, while ANC front-liners attacked the DA and EFF.
Next, Zuma deviated from his prepared speech and embraced the Freedom Front Plus as bearer of conservative white and Afrikaner identity.
No doubt, the president with that second name, often translated as “I laugh at you while grinding you”, was contemplating how this endorsement could take support from the DA and hand it to the FF+.
Zuma may also have destabilised Malema by paying him little compliments.
Rarely before the ANC in government mounted such a barrage of defensive actions. This might have amounted to accountability had it not lacked a sense of repentance, of saying “Sorry for what we did to your Parliament, South Africa”.
Have the president and his circle of protectors learnt lessons from the last week’s fracas, including the humiliation of the president?
Probably yes: to do whatever they do, but to do it more carefully.
Hehehe.
* Booysen is professor at the Wits School of Governance. She is working on a sequel to her book, The ANC and the Regeneration of Political Power.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of independent Media.
The Sunday Independent