Stephen Ward (the Profumo Scandal). Gordon Liddy and E Howard Hunt (Watergate). Now, you can add the name of Schabir Shaik. Small men, all of them, with their 15 inglorious minutes of infamy. But with big trials and with big consequences that overshadowed their pathetic samples of human fallibility. So with Shaik’s conviction on fraud and corruption, there are enormous legal, political and social ramifications that threaten to seriously disturb the hitherto largely gentle course of democratic politics in the new South Africa.
The immediate legal issue is, of course, whether Deputy President Jacob Zuma should be prosecuted.
The political ramifications coursing through the veins of the body politic for the past few days have tested the sinews of even the most seasoned political operatives but can only really solidify once the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions has made its decision. So it needs to act fast and decisively.
In the meantime, the left of the alliance — the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the South African Communist Party and the progressive social democratic wing of the ANC itself — needs to resolve a painful dilemma. These are the forces that remain most -vigorously committed to the principles of accountable, ethical governance. Time and again, they have expressed concern at the muddying waters of business–government relations, noting the convergence of ideological and strategic interests into a new, fast-congealing ruling elite. A big corruption trial, condemning the sloppy, sleazy -attitudes of powerful men on both sides would be helpful.
But, alas, if only it did not so consume our man, JZ!
And herein lies the dilemma. The left needs JZ to be president. Cosatu is firmly on-record in support. Privately at least, the SACP is no less clear that he is the candidate that will provide the party with the most space to breathe and manoeuvre. For the same reasons that it wanted Cyril Ramaphosa in 1994 to be deputy president, so too, now, the left wants a leader who is more inclusive, and more open-minded to its different ideological and policy perspectives.
For these very same reasons, it is in the interests of the centre-right, elite controlling group within the ANC, led of course by President Thabo Mbeki, to have Zuma out of the way. It — and its allies in capital — want another conservative leader.
But the bleakness of Zuma’s plight cannot be avoided: either he was duped by Shaik (unlikely), or he was negligent in his ill-judgement (hardly a strong recommendation for the highest office), or he was a willing accomplice (oh dear, game, set and match over). Whichever, Zuma and his supporters face an inevitable crisis in confidence over his leadership credentials and his integrity. This, then, is a watershed phase in modern South African history.
The future of the left, and of progressive politics, may be no less in the balance as Zuma’s career. If it is the end for JZ and a conservative, Mbekite candidate replaces him now or at the ANC national conference in 2007, it may herald the final marginalisation of the left within the ruling alliance. Or, as some hope, it will prompt it into leaving the alliance and forming a breakaway group. More than the switch to the growth, employment and redistribution strategy, or the repeated deceptions that have occurred since and which have provoked Cosatu’s latest call for national strikes in response to the latest ANC policy discussion documents, the Shaik verdict may have profound implications for the future of progressive politics here.
The other Big Picture consideration is by way of social corollary. What sort of social and political mores do we want? Are we willing to accept the confluence of business and political interests that was so vividly described in Judge Squires’s judgement? A society gets the level of corruption it is prepared to tolerate. What are our toleration levels?
The standards of public life and institutional accountability must be set high; South Africans deserve nothing less. Take the arms deal. It was not fully dealt with by the Joint Investigation Team and certainly not by Parliament — the “sanitised” public accounts committee filibustered and assumed, arrogantly, that the festering boils of incomplete allegations and investigations would vanish for good. But they haven’t. They continue to fester. Judge Squires has now lanced one of them. A court of law has found that a company bribed the deputy president of the country to help it win a juicy arms procurement contract and to protect it from the subsequent investigation into corruption. And not only did he take the money, but Zuma was also complicit in this wider process. He agreed to put his name to the outrageously venomous letter in January 2001 to the public accounts committee, swatting it into its place. At the time, sources let it be known that Zuma had not drafted the letter; the real author was very, very high up in government — it was originally penned by one or both of Mbeki’s senior advisers, Essop Pahad and Majanku Gumbi. Zuma was a fool to sign it.
What a hostage to fortune it has proved to be!
But he was not the only person complicit in the muzzling of -Parliament at the time. Others in the ANC caucus stayed silent as a dark political strategy was unfolded. Men and women with great progressive political histories were persuaded that the very being of the ANC was imperiled by the arms deal allegations — most of them dwarfing the R500 000 a year bribe to Zuma.
Do they regret their choice now, I wonder? As the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Charter approaches, Karl Marx will be spinning in his grave, unsure whether to laugh or cry. Probably both.