This week South Africa was caught in the maelstrom of its gravest post-apartheid political crisis. It is a defining moment — what we do now will determine what kind of country future generations of South Africans inhabit.
As it grappled with what to do about Deputy President Jacob Zuma, so deeply implicated by the judgement against Schabir Shaik, the African National Congress was more publicly split than on any other issue it has faced in government.
While President Thabo Mbeki’s envoys made it clear to Zuma that he should resign or be fired, the latter intensified his lobbying. Last weekend he visited former president Nelson Mandela; then he consolidated the support of his supporters on the left and in the ANC Youth League.
By Sunday night Young Turk Fikile Mbalula was trying to punch holes in the credibility of the Shaik trial judge. By Monday afternoon the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s secretary general, Zwelinzima Vavi, and communist leader Blade Nzimande, were making the same pro-Zuma noises.
By Wednesday, ANC backbenchers were singing that they would accompany Zuma to jail (some may have little choice in the matter). As he prepared to return from Chile, Mbeki and his camp seemed isolated.
At issue is not Mbeki and Zuma’s respective popularity contest; it is whether the nation will tolerate corruption in public life or live the dream of the Constitution.
Of course, the Shaik judgement has played right into Mbeki’s hands — Zuma is not his anointed successor and there is little love lost between the two. But the fact is that the deputy president has been the architect of his own downfall. The conspiracy theorists in our midst should read the 165-page judgement against Shaik to understand the depths that have been plumbed.
Zuma’s represents an ANC that is inclusive, non-racial and conciliatory. Mbeki’s ANC is a much colder affair, where decision-making is managerialist and where the chief governs with a small coterie of insiders.
But this is also a battle between yesterday and tomorrow. Will we forever be bound by the ANC’s imperatives of loyalty and unity, or will our democracy respect its independent institutions that draw a clear line between party and state? Where politicians leave office if they imperil the values of the Constitution?
If it is the latter we seek, Zuma must go. The judgement, and his reaction to it, reveals him to be a party man, disdainful of the institutions of democracy. Witness his attack on Parliament’s oversight powers when it sought to investigate the arms deal, and how he has marshalled his troops to denigrate a judge — casting doubt on his support for an independent judiciary.
This week, an SMS campaign for Zuma did the rounds. In part, it read: “Zum Zum Zum. Walala Wasala. Our leadership have been tried and tested, fought and won, so comrades, let’s not let them manipulate tools like the media and judiciary to discredit us. Let us not sacrifice our own to please those who will never support our movement.”
The pro-Zuma backlash is using revolutionary language. Yet it has the contrary purpose — it seeks to denigrate all the democratic revolutionary fruit the ANC itself has helped to harvest. We offer a message of our own: Zuma must vooma!
A darker gag
Quite possibly, as you are reading this editorial, the Mail & Guardian will again be facing key “Oilgate” actor Sandi Majali across a courtroom. That Majali is not seeking to take the M&G off the streets, as he did two weeks ago, is a consolation. But the relief he is seeking is potentially far more devastating to media freedom and investigative journalism than the earlier gagging order.
Majali wants the court to compel the M&G not to receive, investigate, ask questions about or publish any information relating to his bank accounts, in terms of his right to privacy. This application affects not just one article, but all future articles that the paper might be contemplating or want to research and put out into the public arena.
Obviously, that would put an end to any further “Oilgate” disclosures, as the question of who Majali paid how much money and when is critical to understanding his role as a financial intermediary between the state and the ruling African National Congress. As the alleged theft of taxpayers’ money is at issue, we believe it may very well be in the public interest to research and publish such information. We are not interested in private financial data without a public interest dimension, such as where and how Majali buys his groceries or services his car.
If the court accepts his plea, the precedent will have a profoundly chilling effect on investigative journalism of all kinds, which almost always revolves around information someone regards as private. It would presumably affect even leaked private information which, unsolicited, often lands on journalists’ desks. Police evidence based on intrusions into someone’s private life would also, presumably, be off limits. How far would the principle extend? Would the M&G be precluded from peeping over someone’s fence, even if the national interest was manifestly at stake?
Ultimately, what is at issue are accountability and transparency in both the public and private spheres. These are radically compromised if the right to privacy is not counterbalanced by the public’s right to know.