The long, slow deflation of South Africa’s very own Michelin man continues. Jacob Zuma is subsiding into a pitiful caricature of his former virile self.
This week, almost unnoticed among our childlike, excited antici- pation as to whether President Cyril Ramaphosa (Uncle Cyril) would allow us to buy fags and KFC finger-lickin’ chicken with our Level 4 pocket money, the House of Zuma took another hit.
The last-chance legal bid that was intended permanently to halt his prosecution on corruption charges has been officially dropped.
Zuma’s foundation announced that the Constitutional Court had allowed the withdrawal of his appeal against the Supreme Court’s dismissal of his application for a permanent stay of prosecution.
The delays are now over. Zuma will soon have that exculpatory “day in court” that for 15 years he has been claiming to want so much.
But he will enter the final act of the drama a shadow of the powerful force he once was. Sure, the presidential security squad and the blue-light convoys are still there.
Much of the real power, however, has gone. Cadre loyalties have faded and the party parasites possibly have found more profitable politicians to attach themselves to.
It’s no longer so easy to conjure a crowd outside the court - a mob promising to die for him, to kill for him - to drive home that this is a Big Man of Africa they are dealing with, not someone to be trifled with.
Unfortunately for him, had the ConCourt hearing proceeded, the Big Man wouldn’t even have been able to get his expansive butt to Johannesburg in the luxury to which he had become accustomed.
The squadron of helicopter taxis that shuttled family and friends between rural Nkandla and Durban is gone. Inkwazi, the presidential Boeing, is no longer available.
And with South African Airways now perpetually parked, waiting for a take-off clearance that’s never going to come, JZ can’t even avail himself, his five wives and 23 children, of free travel on the national airliner.
So there he is, stuck out in the sticks in his elaborate Nkandla Pleasure Dome where, by accounts, the chic has become somewhat shabby. As he is finding, it takes a lot of upkeep to keep palatial splendour in top nick.
Worse is the public indifference. No one any longer much cares whether the kidney-shaped “fire pool” once demanded by security regulations now is afloat with colourful plastic toys and ringed with sun loungers.
Money is tight. Last year the liquidators of VBS Mutual Bank filed for a court order to compel Zuma to pay the arrears on the R7.3m loan he had obtained to repay the state for the unauthorised upgrades to Nkandla.
As Zuma’s mojo has subsided like a badly knotted balloon leaking air, so too has his once shiny visage crumbled. In photographs, he looks grey and unwell, making entirely believable the speculation around a serious mystery illness that it appears can be treated only in Cuba and Russia.
In 2015, one of Zuma’s wives was driven from Nkandla after being accused by Zuma and the then-state security minister of having poisoned him. Five years later, the prosecuting authority declined to proceed with charges, saying there was no evidence of poisoning.
It immediately brought to mind the Churchillian exchange between Winston and the acidic Lady Nancy Astor. She reputedly said, “Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea.” To which Churchill shot back, “Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.”
Fortunately for his long-divorced former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, none of this matters. In fact, the woman who the Zuma faction in the ANC had wanted to inherit ex- husband Jacob’s presidential mantle, is going from strength to strength.
Not only, judging by her beaming visage, does she radiate good health, but she appears to be growing in power and influence. It must be especially galling to President Cyril Ramaphosa, the man who supposedly defeated her in that leadership tussle two years ago.
Last week, Ramaphosa said that the lockdown ban on cigarette sales would be lifted. This week Dlamini Zuma, a scarily fanatical warrior in the war against the demon tobacco, simply overruled him.
The House of Zuma may still prevail in South African politics. Just a different part of it.
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