Scramble to secure a Zuma presidency

Senior ANC leaders are preparing to push strongly for a law that prohibits criminal charges against a sitting state president in a last-ditch effort to bolster Jacob Zuma’s drive to become South Africa’s president.

This appears to be the dominant strategy after indications that a proposed blanket amnesty for corruption in the arms deal would be fraught with difficulties, as it would entail admissions of wrongdoing Zuma is unwilling to make.

There is also a grudging admission that the strategy of scrapping the Scorpions and putting pressure on the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has not worked.

Zuma supporters are increasingly reconciling themselves to the idea that Zuma will be tried at some stage.

Several sources close to Zuma pointed out that even if an amnesty is granted, it might not help Zuma, who faces myriad other charges unrelated to the arms procurement.

An NEC member, also a senior parliamentarian, told the Mail & Guardian that ANC leaders had yet to study the report they commissioned on the arms deal. He said that the exact amnesty mechanism, and determining who would receive it, might be too cumbersome and complex to resolve.

Zuma supporters are pinning their hopes on the battery of legal challenges and possible appeals he may still bring, which could prevent any trial taking place by the time of national elections in April or May.

However, it will not be plain sailing for those who favour legislation to outlaw prosecutions of a sitting president. Other NEC members are concerned about the ANC being seen to abuse its majority to change the law or the Constitution.

”We are very careful in the ANC not to be seen as another African country that changes laws just to suit us. We can’t focus only on the short term; we must look at what this would mean for the future,” said an NEC member who is also a senior government official.

”So far we have resisted using our two-thirds majority to change laws which do not suit us or are uncomfortable for us. Even the NEC is split — there are people who say the legal process must be followed — and we must allow the law to take its course. Others say that this is a political problem that needs a political solution.

Another source concurred: ”The NEC is not united around what route to take because of the different perspectives people have.”

Although Cosatu, the South African Communist Party and the ANC Youth League have stepped up pressure on the NPA, attacking its credibility and pushing for its component, the Scorpions, to be shut down by June, they have failed in their core aim of forcing the body to abandon the charges against Zuma.

In a tacit admission of this failure Cosatu deputy general secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali insisted this week that there had to be a political solution.

Ntshalintshali said Cosatu believed that when Zuma was dismissed from his position as the country’s deputy president, it was not because he had done wrong. ”It was a political decision. Since his removal from office we have been of the view that there is no case against him.”

Ntshalintshali said the Zuma case would not be resolved through the courts. ”We need to find a political solution for him. So much injustice has been done to him; every move by the NPA is hell-bent on destroying him,” he said.

The NPA appeared this week to be pushing for a trial around April, which would adversely affect the ANC’s election campaign. However, lawyers for the two sides will finalise trial dates next week.

An ANC MP who would be key to drafting such legislation confirmed that he had been approached by ”sober” comrades who ”are not the rabid youth league types” on the issue of legislation to protect a serving state president from prosecution.

”Some people feel [President Sylvio] Berlusconi in Italy has just done it and that it could be done here. They feel it’s better to have legal provisions that allow for the five-year suspension of charges while the guy is president than to have the institutions and the courts undermined and the independence of the judiciary put constantly under threat, as they are currently.”

There is also concern that a Zuma conviction could trigger instability.

The ANC MP said legislation ”will cause a hoo-ha because you are using the parliamentary majority to do it.

”And we have to make it clear that you can only have this protection while you are sitting president; this is not the United States, where you can never be charged. This is the Chirac option, where [former French president Jacques] Chirac is now being charged for offences allegedly committed while he was still mayor of Paris.”

A youth leader closely associated with Zuma said such legislation would allow Zuma to continue his work as state president without undermining the justice system.

However, even if a law is passed, it is unclear whether prosecutors will have to wait for five or 10 years before they can move on the case, as it is unclear whether he would serve one or two terms.

Zuma intimated in a recent interview with The Sunday Independent that he could serve only one term as president.

However, a member of his inner circle said the ANC, not Zuma, would decide.

He said it would suit the ANC if he served two terms, as the party could not afford another bruising battle for the presidency so soon after the Polokwane conference.

Attacks on the judiciary
The leaders of Cosatu, the South African Communist Party and the ANC have stepped up their rhetoric against the judiciary, despite Chief Justice Pius Langa’s warning that their criticisms could undermine confidence in the judiciary and hinder its effectiveness.

At a lecture on Friday in honour of former chief justice Ismail Mahomed, Langa said: ‘Comment and criticism must be informed and thoughtful, not reactionary and alarmist, because that would tend to undermine the rule of law … Such criticism also has the potential to weaken confidence in the judiciary; and without public confidence, the judicial system loses its legitimacy and cannot operate effectively.”

On Wednesday Cosatu deputy secretary Bheki Ntshalintshali told protesters in Pretoria: ‘We cannot have a judicial system that acts in the manner which our courts have acted …

‘No amount of threat will intimidate Cosatu from talking about the conduct of the judiciary. We are not going to be told that judges are angels. They take decisions under the influence of liquor.”

On Thursday SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said institutions of the criminal justice system are not above the law and cannot act outside the prescriptions of basic law.

Nzimande told the Mail & Guardian last week that the Constitutional Court’s ruling against Zuma was ‘a constitutional jungle” and that South Africa ‘was going down the dangerous route of becoming a banana republic”.

He also attacked senior ANC members Kader Asmal and Raymond Suttner for keeping quiet while Zuma’s rights were being abused.

‘How do we explain this long lapse and the suddenly renewed post-2007 activism of theirs — in the light of the need for revolutionary consistency on matters of justice and human rights?” he asked.

Writing recently on the SACP website, the party’s national organiser, Solly Maphaila, accused the judiciary of ‘being collusive to a perpetual assassination of human rights and justice in this country”.

‘The judiciary is living in its own elitist lagoon away from the reality of South African society. In fact it has almost become a judicial cabal subtly colluding with one another and sending particular signals on its course of action,” Maphaila wrote.

Reacting to Langa’s speech and the fact that the Constitutional Court handed down its judgement days before Zuma’s Pietermaritzburg High Court application, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe suggested the judiciary was being ‘mobilised” against Zuma.

ANC spokesperson Jessie Duarte told reporters outside the Pietermaritzburg High Court this week that Zuma was being subjected to malicious prosecution and that ANC leaders ‘had serious reservations” about whether he would receive a fair trial.