‘Zuma for sale”, the Mail & Guardian headline shouted above a close-cropped picture of the face of South Africa’s deputy president. The man was wearing tinted glasses, but his eyes seemed pained and his brow was furrowed.
That was in August. National prosecutions director Bulelani Ngcuka had just said that though he was not charging Jacob Zuma, there was a prima facie criminal case against him.
Ngcuka had also just issued a draft charge sheet against Zuma’s confidant, Schabir Shaik, the most extraordinary feature of which was the way it implicated the deputy president as much as the accused in a web of corruption. Zuma: Shaik’s un-accused co-accused.
Democratic South Africa was at the threshold of its most public political scandal, an ignominy that may still prove as protracted as the arms deal scandal in which it has its genesis.
People in the ”Ngcuka camp” (as it came to be known when a matter of right vs wrong was, correctly or not, recast as a struggle between two power blocs) had been confidently predicting that, with the information about to be released, Zuma would roll over and die.
He would have no choice, they said, considering the outrage that was certain to follow from within the ranks of the African National Congress and from the public at large.
That was in August. As I write this, in December, there is another photograph of the deputy president, this time in a daily paper. Here Zuma seems quietly confident; a hint of a grin as he raises open palms above his head in acknowledgement. The caption: ”Deputy President Jacob Zuma gets a tumultuous reception…”
Students of various disciplines, including those interested in the art of spin, may contemplate for some time to come this remarkable change in Zuma’s fortunes.
For how can it be that a man, rumours of whose moral and political death had preceded him, is now the darling of ANC party structures (so much so that he has secured the second highest parliamentary list nomination); of the ANC’s alliance partners; and of the public at large?
How can it be that he is looking more presidential by the day?
A large part of the answer, of course, will be that public discourse had been diverted from a detailed assessment of Zuma’s actions.
But how did this come about? In Ngcuka’s draft charge sheet against Shaik, Zuma was implicated in two largely separate allegations, or sets of allegations, of corruption.
The first was of straightforward bribery: Zuma had allegedly demanded R500 000 annually to ”protect and permanently support” the French arms multinational Thomson CSF, now named Thales.
It was an extraordinary allegation, a first against a politician so senior. It was a body blow, but the deputy president absorbed it.
What helped Zuma do this was a campaign of spin he and members of his ”camp”, notably Mac Maharaj and Mo Shaik, but also the likes of ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe, had launched against Ngcuka. The accuser had become the accused.
The content of the campaign — that the prosecuting boss had been an apartheid spy; that he was beholden to his former masters; and that he was abusing his power through selective investigation and smears — is history now, largely dealt with by the Hefer commission (the latter an effective counter-intervention by President Thabo Mbeki, which raises interesting questions about tensions at the top and whether Mbeki, too, had indulged in spin).
The Zuma ”camp’s” spin was an effective diversion not only because of the overwhelming publicity, no matter how temporary, it generated, but also because it reinforced the perception of two power blocs slugging it out. The claims against Zuma were seen as blows in some kind of a sparring match rather than as allegations deserving autonomous debate.
And so while Ngcuka emerged largely unscathed from the campaign against him, it was, paradoxically, a lifesaver for Zuma.
But there is another reason Zuma has survived the Thomson CSF bribery allegation. That reason is far less problematic as it relates to the nature of the allegation itself. Simply put, there is no proof that Zuma is guilty.
The evidence, as tantalisingly convincing as it appears to be, is circumstantial. Until such time as direct evidence is secured, or more witnesses come forward, or the rigours of due process in the Shaik trial next year confirm the seemingly apparent, Zuma’s guilt or otherwise remains moot.
Zuma has denied the charge; and even that he had attended the meeting where he had supposedly confirmed the bribe demand to Thomson CSF official Alain ThÃ