Slowly the ANC’s election strategy is beginning to emerge. It’s very simple. It will revolve around one man: Jacob Zuma. He was the problem. They will excitedly tell us, as though it’s a new revelation, that now that the problem is gone, they can begin with the serious business of providing the nice goodies they’ve been promising the electorate for the past 30 years.
It’s all poppycock of course. But do they have a choice? Caught up in a miasma of looting, crime, corruption, incompetence, load-shedding and many other policies and practices that have brought nothing but poverty to the populace, they’ll try to make the best of a bad situation. And Zuma will be a convenient scapegoat.
An unpopular president who plunged the country into a sewer of depravity and a narcissist adept at playing victim, Zuma would seem to fit the bill. But he’s both creature and creator of the movement. The ANC may be clumsily trying to get rid of him, but his imprint, his personality and legacy are all over the party. The ANC remains Zuma’s party. Cyril Ramaphosa, with his weak-kneed stewardship, has yet to stamp his authority on the party. But then, nobody knows what the man stands for.
The way the ANC has dealt with the Zuma imbroglio seems to have been evolving; and mainly driven by cowardice. They have been paralysed by fear of what could happen if they were to act against him.
A lesser miscreant would have been dispensed with forthwith. But it was more than a month before the ANC could summon enough courage to do something about a man who deliberately and contemptuously cocked a snook at them. They were hoping he’d go quietly. Instead, the ANC, and especially Ramaphosa, whom Zuma holds in absolute contempt, have become fodder for his stump speeches for this mysterious party which has been drawing huge crowds. Initially, in the words of ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, Zuma, by opting to campaign and vote for another party, as good as expelled himself.
But, like a tenacious weevil, Zuma kept niggling them. During the party’s celebrations in Mbombela, Gwede Mantashe, ANC chair, chided reporters for persistently asking questions about Zuma. The ANC, he said, was dealing with important issues like campaigning. They’d attend to Zuma after the elections. That line of reasoning couldn’t hold for long. It played straight into Zuma’s hands, he was eating their lunch, attracting excited crowds and therefore posing a threat to the party’s hegemony, especially in KwaZulu-Natal.
So this week the ANC National Executive Committee finally grew a backbone and suspended Zuma. Kicking the can down the road not only allows the party to avoid dealing with such a hot potato so close to the elections — a poll they, for the first time, aren’t too certain of winning — it also gives them the space to properly get the lay of the land and therefore act accordingly after the poll. But, crucially, suspension is obviously a halfway station to expulsion.
The ANC will go to the country carrying the happy news that the source of their problems, the bogeyman, is finally gone. They have lanced the boil, so to speak, and the government can now begin the serious business of catering to the country’s needs. They can’t run on their record, which is too awful even for their own palate.
So this week the ANC National Executive Committee finally grew a backbone and suspended Zuma
They’ll hang that on Zuma’s neck. So they’ll offer good tidings of a future without the Zuma albatross, exploiting the hopes of an electorate desperate for basic services. It is indeed a sad irony that the ANC, whose incompetence and corruption have plunged ordinary people deeper into poverty, would tout the eradication of the scourge in a desperate attempt to stay in power. In other words, we are the only people who know how to get you out of this hole because we dug it in the first place. Unfortunately many people, because of ignorance or desperation, will buy into this canard.
Ramaphosa’s presidency has always been predicated on a lie, that all this debauchery is the work of one individual — the so-called nine wasted years. State capture so nicely encapsulates the lie. It’s almost as though state capture is some alien that came down from outer space to do terrible things to us. And Ramaphosa is the saviour who has mercifully come to our rescue before we stagger to our deaths.
State capture is simply stealing and looting by the ruling class and brazenly bragging about it as they enjoy their ill-gotten gains. It’s lessening the pain of those, the rest of us, who are watching this shameless profligacy. The public would have looked kindly on Ramaphosa’s record had he fulfilled a smidgen of his promises. Unfortunately, he hasn’t.
This week, in a rare television interview, he claimed to have stopped state capture — as if it were some onrushing train furiously charging towards us — and prevented state institutions from falling into total ruin. The idea that state capture is behind us is not borne out by the evidence.
He has done nothing, for instance, to deal with individuals in his party fingered in the Zondo commission. In fact, he’s promoted some of them. The whole organisation is crawling with thieves still. Stealing is probably the only thing they do well. His deputy, Paul Mashatile, who can barely hide his impatience to succeed him, is entangled in scandals, which Ramaphosa seems unwilling or even scared to deal with. In the meantime, the air is thick with the putrid stench of Phala Phala.
As for Ramaphosa claiming he’s rescued state institutions, let’s look at the record. Eskom remains a mess, with load-shedding on steroids. Transnet can’t run a train because the tracks have been pilfered, and heavy-duty trucks are clogging the roads as a result, with dire consequences for the economy. The National Prosecutions Authority, supposed to be the anvil in the fight against crime and corruption, has become a toothless joke.
The ANC is damaged goods even without Zuma. This tiger is not about to change its stripes.
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