The Zondo commission exposed corruption under then president Jacob Zuma. Photo: Mlungisi Louw/Getty Images
Thursday.
Another day, another court appearance by former head of state Jacob Zuma, who is back in Pietermaritzburg for a date with the judge stemming from his corruption trial.
The case relating to the payments he received from Schabir Shaik in the 1990s has been going on in one form or another since June 2005, when uBaba was first arrested for the bribes.
Shaik got 15 years for the payments — and a medical parole to go home and die. But, like uBaba’s delaying game, Schabir is still pretty damned strong nearly two decades later.
Today, it’s uBaba’s eleventy seventh attempt to have state prosecutor Billy Downer removed from the case or criminally charged or disbarred.
Thus far, results haven’t exactly been forthcoming, but that hasn’t deterred Zuma, who is back with a demand for Downer’s recusal. So it’s another day in court to delay the day in court that uBaba has claimed to want since he first got handcuffed.
Corruption charges or not, the ANC leadership in KwaZulu-Natal has decided that uBaba will play a leading role in its campaign to retain control of the province — and the country — in next year’s national and provincial elections.
They believe that uBaba is their secret weapon when it comes to getting residents of the kingdom to vote for the governing party; to prevent his followers in the ANC from voting for — or moving to — the Red Berets.
The comrades have seen their support in the province dropping steadily in recent elections and face the very real prospect of being in the opposition benches in the provincial legislature, this time next year.
The ANC’s provincial brains trust believes that having the former president belt out a few golden oldies and berate voters with tales of his persecution by the party’s current leadership and the need to unseat them will bring back the voters in the droves.
They don’t seem to see any need to bring back those ANC voters who migrated from the party because of Zuma, but that appears to have never really been a priority for provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo and the rest of his leadership.
The comrades in the kingdom are rattled by the movement of their comrades — and local celebrities — into the ranks of the Economic Freedom Fighters, who all of a sudden have 62 jobs on offer for those who wish to cross the floor.
The firing by EFF leader Julius Malema of public representatives who failed to meet the bus quota — and the recent parachuting in of well-known names associated with the Zuma faction in the ANC to its parliamentary lists — presents the comrades with a dilemma.
After all, there are many big names who won’t make the ANC’s provincial or national lists next year to whom Vusi Khoza’s parliamentary seat — and the rest of the EFF vacancies — must be looking rather attractive.
The comrades reckon that if uBaba campaigns for the ANC, he will halt — or at least slow down — the exodus of voters that has helped cost them 10 by-elections in KwaZulu-Natal since last November.
They believe that axing Zuma — and not their reckless leadership on top of nine years of looting and hollowing out the organs of state and its entities by him and his cronies — has cost the ANC support, and that getting him out there in a yellow skipa will stop the rot.
Thus far, uBaba has kept it relatively local, with a call on the comrades at Mandeni last weekend to stay in the party and to join him in “rescuing” the ANC from those who have hijacked it.
That’s not the kind of messaging that Luthuli House would have been hoping for — renewal for who? — but exactly what was going to happen the minute uBaba got hold of a microphone on an ANC platform.
At least they haven’t asked Zuma to wear his ANC T-shirt during court appearances on corruption charges — or set up voter registration tents outside the Pietermaritzburg high court — as part of their campaign to rescue the party.
Yet.
The comrades in the kingdom will be hoping Zuma will have forgotten that they drank his tea, ate his meat and nominated Zweli Mkhize as their presidential candidate instead of him ahead of the ANC national conference last year.
Forgotten, or at least that he has forgiven them.
It’s likely.
Zuma’s legal teams have also been chowing his meat — and his money — since 2005 only to delay the inevitable and he’s stuck by them, so why not forgive the comrades from the kingdom for their braai stand betrayal?