Deputy President Jacob Zuma this week went for the jugular as he staged a counter-attack against the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions and its chief Bulelani Ngcuka.
He upped the ante, refusing to meet Thursday’s deadline to answer questions raised by his role in the arms deal. Officials close to Zuma say he was spurred on by the belief that the prosecutors do not have enough information to secure a prosecution — a conclusion reached after he was given a set of 35 “imprecise” and wide-ranging questions related to his role in the arms deal on July 9.
If the prosecutors’ investigation was close enough to being able to press charges, the questions would have been more finely honed and detailed, say those in his camp.
“I considered many of the questions invasive of my privacy and unrelated to any conceivable contravention of the law arising from the arms procurement process,” says Zuma.
African National Congress leaders at national and provincial level, in Parliament and in the government canvassed this week by the Mail & Guardian are standing by Zuma, saying that the deputy president continues to enjoy widespread
support among the rank and file.
Some allege he is the victim of a hardline faction within the party that wants to force him from his position ahead of the party’s election-list process.
Zuma’s backers believe that the prosecution is political. A senior leader said: “They [Zuma’s detractors] never wanted JZ as deputy, now they want to make sure that he does not make it again and to clear the path to place their own candidate.”
Such a plan may backfire, they say. An official says the ANC rallies around beleagured leaders: “You can be damaged in the public domain, but strengthened in the ANC.”
Elected the party’s deputy president last year, Zuma will stay in that position beyond next year’s election. It is also becoming an ANC tradition that the party’s second-in-command becomes the country’s deputy president, shoring up his position after the election.
A Luthuli House official denied the controversy had links to the ANC. But he added: “It all seems very strange. The Scorpions are behaving as if they are writing the script of a movie.”
Zuma’s three-page counter-offensive this week details his efforts since last December to secure confirmation from the Scorpions of an investigation against him. He means that all he knew of the allegations was what he read in the newspapers. The correspondence says his lawyers considered using the Promotion of Access to Information Act to secure the Scorpions’ files against him.
At the heart of Zuma’s complaint is that he has been shoddily treated by the Scorpions, a complaint that Zuma raised with South African police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, himself often at odds with these special forces.
“If [United States Vice-President] Dick Cheney or [British Deputy Prime Minister] John Prescott had been investigated, I’m sure they would have been informed,” says a government official, adding, “We just want this matter to end now.”
Zuma’s conciliatory approach to issues, whether towards the alliance partners — the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Communist Party — or to the Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu-Natal has won him many friends, who are now rallying around him.
The SACP this week condemned the leak of the detail of the investigation against him, pointing out that “no one is above the law; but no one is guilty until so proven.
“As much as the media may have an important investigative role, this should be balanced with the need for an effective and fair investigation process.
“Also important is the individual’s rights, which can be seriously impaired by indiscriminate leaking and publication of information. There are several ways in which we can undermine our new democracy — if we place some in authority above the law, certainly; but also, if we treat important institutions cavalierly; or if we allow senior officials to engage each other in extremely personalised, and seemingly factionalised ways.”
A senior ANC leader said: “It is easy to identify the members of this hard-line faction in KwaZulu-Natal — they are people like S’bu Ndebele and Dumisani Makhaye. While in the pro-Zuma faction are people like Zweli Mkhize, who also believe in the principles of reconciliation and taking everyone on board. Zuma comes from [Nelson] Mandela’s tradition, unlike Mbeki.”
A hugely popular leader and known for his accessibility, Zuma was elected deputy secretary general at the ANC’s first national conference in 1991 after the party’s
un-banning.
In 1994, he was elected ANC’s national chair and, at the next conference in 1997, the deputy president.
ANC members have also linked the investigation with the statement, which they feel the deputy president was pressured to make in 2001, when he distanced himself from any aspirations for the president’s position.
Zuma’s 2001 statement had read: “We have been aware of some elements in various guises, who have been trying to isolate the president by creating the impression that some of his trusted comrades are plotting against him and, in this way, remove them from him.
“He [Mr Mbeki] has a profound understanding of the movement, has provided excellent leadership to South Africa during its most trying times, and continues to do so. He has my unqualified support as the president of both the ANC and the country.”
While the next national presidential race will only hot up as the ANC’s next national conference looms in 2007, when the party will choose a new president, the allegations against Zuma are also read as early skirmishes in the succession battle.
A senior alliance leader pointed out that Zuma has conducted himself “very well organisationally — he has always been consistent on traditional ANC positions”.
Zuma has his loyal following in KwaZulu-Natal, where a leader described him as a “straightforward” person, who had “more credibility than the president”.
He continues to enjoy national support too. He was voted in as deputy president of the ANC for the second term at the party’s national conference last year, despite the allegations of corruption.
ANC members close to Zuma feel that the deputy president will not bow out without a fight — “things are bound to get very dirty.” As they did this week.