A decision to sack Deputy President Jacob Zuma after he was implicated in alleged corruption in the trial of Durban businessman Schabir Shaik could have dire consequences for the government and the African National Congress.
This is according to a political analyst Doctor Alex Amtaika, who is based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
President Thabo Mbeki is expected to make an announcement on Zuma’s future on Tuesday afternoon, but Amtaika said if the deputy president was fired, ”it will seem unjust”.
”Zuma has not been charged and not been found guilty. Being implicated is very different from being proved guilty.”
He said Mbeki was in a dilemma because ”he has been preaching clean governance in Africa and championing Nepad” and if he did not act on the Zuma issue it would hang like a cloud over his head.
However, ”he is trying to preserve the integrity of the government”.
Amtaika said: ”He [Mbeki] will be told ‘you cannot deal with the issue of corruption in your own government’.”
He said although Mbeki had the power to hire and fire the deputy president and Cabinet ministers, it was a decision that would need a lot of consideration.
”Jacob Zuma being so popular, Mbeki can’t just rush to make such a decision. There has to be proper consultation,” Amtaika said.
He said if Zuma had resigned it would have saved the ANC from a lot of criticism.
”It would have been the honourable thing to do but he is not bound by law to do so.”
According to Amtaika, Zuma was ”revered for negotiating peace in KwaZulu-Natal following the 1994 elections”.
Mbeki will ‘deal’ with issues
Mbeki will address a joint sitting of Parliament on Tuesday after a week of calls for the dismissal of his deputy, Jacob Zuma, who has been implicated in corruption.
”The president will deal with issues arising from the judgement of Judge Hilary Squires,” said presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo on Monday.
”The paperwork is being finalised for the president to address a joint sitting.”
Last week Squires sentenced Durban businessman Schabir Shaik, who acted as financial adviser to Jacob Zuma, to 15 years in prison for fraud and corruption.
Squires said the two men had had a ”generally corrupt” relationship.
‘Prepared for the worst’
Business Day newspaper quoted Zuma’s backers in the ANC-led alliance as saying they ”were prepared for the worst”.
The newspaper said that by using Parliament to announce his decision on Zuma, Mbeki is signalling that he is firmly in control of of his Cabinet and the state.
Under the headline, Zuma axed, The Star newspaper on Tuesday said Zuma had been shown the door by Mbeki. It said it had confirmed this with ”senior government officials”.
Meanwgile, senior figures in the tripartite alliance have reportedly been summoned to a meeting with Mbeki in Cape Town on Tuesday.
Cosatu’s second deputy president, Violet Seboni, said on Monday night that the union federation’s general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi would fly down from Johannesburg for the meeting.
She said she did not know what was on the agenda.
Mbeki is under pressure from some quarters to fire Zuma, who is first in line for the presidency, while many in the African National Congress and its alliance partners are insisting he stay in office.
Democratic Alliance chief whip Douglas Gibson said this was Mbeki’s greatest test as president.
”I cannot believe that the president would not do the right thing, and that would be to fire Deputy President Jacob Zuma,” he said.
”The president has always set his face against corruption.”
The ANC is not divided
Meanwhile, the ANC had denied there are divisions within the party over the Zuma affair.
”The ANC is not — and cannot be — divided over the outcome of the Schabir Shaik trial,” said ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama in a statement on Monday evening.
”The position of the organisation is well-known and broadly supported within the ranks of the ANC and the alliance — that due process must be followed and that the basic tenets of justice respected and upheld.”
Reports of conflict in the party have ”been fuelled by a handful of voices within the ANC and its alliance partners who willingly propagate such falsehoods in pursuit of narrow individual agendas,” he said.
Burning the midnight oil
On Monday Mbeki held a seven-hour meeting with senior African National Congress officials at ANC headquarters in Johannesburg.
Ngonyama denied that Zuma was the subject of those talks, but it was widely believed that his fate was discussed at the meeting.
Although no reporters saw Zuma being driven away from the building, he was believed to have left the meeting about two hours before the rest of the ANC executives.
Ngonyama earlier said: ”It’s an ordinary official meeting.”
Besides Mbeki and Zuma, those attending were ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota, party secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe, his deputy, Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele, and treasurer Mendi Msimang.
Ngonyama said he did not have any idea what was on the agenda. He said the agenda was decided by the leaders themselves. However, he did say there would be ”no discussion on Zuma”.
Zuma was elected deputy president in 1999, and was expected to succeed Mbeki in 2009 when his second and final term as president ends.
On Sunday, Zuma told a Congress of South African Trade Unions meeting in Durban that he was prepared to become an ordinary member of the ANC.
”I have served as a branch member with no position [as an] ordinary activist, and I have served with some responsibilities in a branch, and I have served at many levels.
”I will always be ready to do that, even today. The day the ANC says do this I will do it,” the South African Broadcasting Corporation quoted Zuma as saying. – Sapa