The first time I met Bulelani Ngcuka it left an impression. It was at a sitting of the special electoral tribunal in Cape Town in March 1994, just weeks before the founding election. The African National Congress was seeking to interdict an especially nasty piece of swaart gevaar National Party propaganda entitled The Winds of Change.
Dullah Omar and now High Court Judge Siraj Desai appeared on behalf of the ANC. At the interval I approached a man who appeared to be acting as the attorney. I had not been in the country for long so I was compelled to ask, ‘Are you with the ANC?” With a mischievous twinkle of the eye that I’ve noticed on subsequent occasions, Ngcuka replied, ‘I am the ANC.”
I thought then that the cheeky humour of the comment outweighed the cheeky arrogance of it. It is a good blend for politics and it has served him well — at least until now. A diligent member of the United Democratic Front in Cape Town — but in the broader context of the struggle no luminary — he has done rather well for himself by advancing his career in two giant steps.
First when he was plucked out of relatively obscure back-bench territory to become deputy and soon after that permanent chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, where he tried hard to turn the ambitious dream of the second house into a meaningful political reality.
Next he was appointed national director of public prosecutions, or ‘super attorney general” as it was first called. He has made the position his own, justifying the trust President Thabo Mbeki placed in him and appearing on the front cover of the Financial Mail in Blues Brothers style — all dark suit and bristling pugnacity, the head totem in the fight against crime.
Throughout all of this it was impossible to link his rise with any particularly potent political constituency. One hoped that it was, therefore, because of his talent and independence of mind rather than his loyalty to his party. For a few days after his selection some opposition parties whinged about the appointment of a ‘party hack”. They failed to see that creating the appearance of being ‘tough on crime” was so important to the government that Ngcuka was appointed precisely because his leadership was trusted.
Besides, he was crafty in taking on and arresting prominent ANC figures: Tony Yengeni and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in particular. Crafty, because at a stroke he killed the notion that he was a party hack and because Yengeni’s and Madikizela-Mandela’s arrogance and inept tactics had so enervated the ANC’s middle and senior ranks that they had become expendable. The political risk for Ngcuka, however, was marginal.
Then things got a little trickier. The Scorpions promised to follow the arms deal trail. Wandering around the ANC national conference in Stellenbosch last December, Ngcuka and his men appeared to be on a mission. It was hard to tell whether it was spin or bravado or both.
Evidence against Deputy President Jacob Zuma had fallen in their laps. Some of the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) staff now wish they had ignored it and some knew at the time that it would lead to a watershed. That moment has now arrived with the start of the Hefer commission, led by retired Appeal Court judge president Joos Hefer, on Monday.
Away from South Africa for most of September I was reminded, once again, that a month is a veritable eternity in South African politics. Internet news gave a surreal detachment to the unfolding events. First there was the mundane: Darrel Bristow-Bovey was exposed for new acts of plagiarism. My immediate reaction: Could he have been so stupid, but does anyone really care? Then the startling: Ngcuka was exposed as a spy. My immediate reaction: Could he have been so stupid, but does anyone really care?
Though it was utterly baffling at first, events have acquired an inexorable sense of clarity as they have developed. The evidence against Zuma was right before their eyes, the NDPP decided they could not ignore it. By the end, their assessment was that the evidence was 70 to 80% strong. Strong enough to proceed against you or me, but not watertight enough to take on a deputy president. To prosecute without convicting would be a devastating blow for a constitutional body. Not to prosecute would mean … what? Trouble, because they could not bring themselves — knowing what they had know — to say that Zuma was innocent.
Once Ngcuka used the words ‘prima facie case” the die was cast and the ANC was at war. In the view of more than one national executive committee member that I have spoken with it is an internal conflict more serious than HIV/Aids was a year and a half ago and the most serious since the secret flip to the growth, employment and redistribution strategy in 1996.
In the anxious build-up to a general election, factions quickly form around the issue at stake. The strategy of Zuma’s camp soon emerged: to make this an issue for the ANC rather than for a government that is increasingly wishing it could shake the leech of arms deal corruption from its back.
So far the strategy is working pretty effectively. Zuma has attracted all manner of ‘anti-Mbekites” to his side. I am told that the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s conference spent a good deal of time paying homage to JZ rather than scrutinising ANC government policy. I suppose that when you’re losing the war, fighting a battle must be fun.
Whether they know it by name or not the Zuma camp has also pursued a policy of triangulation, aiming to sow confusion and division within the leadership by encouraging rumours that Ngcuka is a central cog in a more complex plot, the outcome of which is the fatal contamination of the president and his deputy. The image of the end of a Jacobean tragedy springs to mind, with the main players strewn dead across the stage.
Awakened from this reverie, and reverting abruptly to contemporary ANC tragedy, the spy allegations are nothing more than the most obvious manifestation of Zuma’s strategy — and what a fantastic distraction they are! Will Hefer puncture this agenda? His terms of reference are narrow. But then so were Lord James Hutton’s in London.
This is not to say that the Hefer inquiry is going to be as captivating as Hutton. Hutton has listened to a great deal of evidence that may have been relevant to his core question of why David Kelly died, but which was also remarkably illuminating the greater questions of why the British went to war.
While Hefer is unlikely to shed much light on the inner workings of the South African government, it may illuminate a more interesting place: the ANC. Hefer, solid member of the judiciary that he is, may be unable to resist that temptation.
It ought to be televised so that those of us who do not live in Bloemfontein can see and hear the evidence and make up our own minds.
In as much as Ngcuka faces his Waterloo over the next couple of weeks, so will Zuma when the Schabir Shaik trial commences next year. In the meantime one person looks good, smelling of roses as he plays an admirably straight bat and quietly goes about his business. Answers on a postcard please.