After the tea break, let's focus on the real issues

I was having tea all by myself the other day, as newspapermen are wont to do under this strange new normal of early-evening curfews and intermittent prohibitions on the sale and purchase of much stronger beverages.

It occurred to me at that point that my eldest child was barely three when political journalism in our country began to be consumed by one story - that of the then deputy president Jacob Zuma and his troubled relationship with the justice system.

My daughter has now reached her 20s and is studying towards a career in the legal profession, and still Zuma's troubles dominate the headlines. At this rate, who knows, she may very well one day find herself working for one side or another in one of the former president's cases.

In the years that the Zuma story has dominated the headlines and occupied our national psyche, SA has gone from being the largest economy on the African continent to lagging behind Nigeria, inequality has increased to levels where we are regarded as the most unequal society in the world, and unemployment, especially among the youth, has reached dangerously high levels.

Zuma's ousting from office in February 2018 offered a glimmer of hope that, finally, the sorry chapter was behind us and that SA would be able to confront its fundamental problems without the distractions that come with a head of state who spends more time consulting lawyers than getting counsel from his advisers on matters of state.

But alas, three years later, a tweet from his account - even if it is just to announce a meeting with a politician some may consider his prodigal political son - causes a great sensation. A political storm in a teacup, if ever there was one.

One can hardly fault Zuma here. He is a politician and politicians thrive on hogging headlines and publicity. In his case, being a focal point of the national conversation not only catapulted him to the summit of political power but, for a while, helped to convince many that his legal troubles were the result of political machinations by his foes.

So it makes sense that even after his somewhat forced retirement, he still does all he can to stay in the news, given the fact that his long-standing legal troubles are still not over and that he could be facing new ones given developments around the state capture commission headed by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo.

On the very day that the nation's gaze was trained on Zuma and his tea meeting with EFF leader Julius Malema, the Special Investigating Unit was revealing that the scale of corruption it had uncovered relating to the procurement of PPEs was the worst it has ever seen

Without doubt these cases are of great public interest and, as citizens, we have a duty to follow them closely because they go to the very heart of our nation's struggle against corruption.

But we must not let them distract us from the here and now.

On the very day that the nation's gaze was trained on Zuma and his tea meeting with EFF leader Julius Malema, the Special Investigating Unit was revealing that the scale of corruption it had uncovered relating to the procurement of PPEs was the worst it has ever seen.

This tells us only one thing, that the theft of public resources did not stop with the departure of a president who had become so closely associated with corruption.

Too many current politicians would like to pull the wool over our eyes by decrying the abuses of the so-called nine wasted years as they continue to line their pockets while we are not looking.

Besides corruption, there are many other issues on which we need to hold those in power to account. The Covid-19 pandemic merely worsened what was already a massive economic crisis. The army of the unemployed grows by the day while businesses, big and small, continue to have to shut down.

These are the issues we should be obsessing about because they have far-reaching implications for the stability of our country, and for its future.

Zuma's legal issues need to be left where they belong: in the courts and in front of the judge at the commission. They should not be allowed again to dominate and determine the political discourse. We know where that led us in the past. We should not repeat that mistake.

Popular as he may still be in some quarters, the fact of the matter is that Zuma is long past his political prime. His supporters may be among the most vocal, but his influence and power have diminished over the years. He is unlikely to make any meaningful comeback or instigate a reconfiguration of the country's politics in any significant way.

Therefore, instead of treating every move he makes as some kind of political earthquake, we should see things in the right perspective: he is a retired politician fighting his own legal battles. Ours is to move forward and build our young democracy.