Could Jacob Zuma's days in office come to an end prematurely? (Reuters)
COMMENT
At no time has the need to ponder over scenarios for the short and medium term future of the country forcefully presented itself than in the period leading up to the August 8 parliamentary no confidence vote on President Jacob Zuma.
The ANC is on record for its opposition to a secret ballot vote in as much as it has decreed the impotence of the consciences of its members of Parliament in decision-making.
Equally well known are the views of National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete whose conduct suggests that she sees herself more as a party operative than an impartial presiding officer of an independent legislative branch of government.
Mbete will likely exercise her discretion “arbitrarily or whimsically” rather than follow “a proper and rational basis” as the Constitutional Court directed her in its recent judgment on the matter.
Upper most in her mind will be subjective considerations, power mergers and acquisitions ahead of the ANC elective conference in December and not the greater good and well-being of the country. Hardly able to chair the assembly’s meetings of less than 400 MPs since the election of the 5th democratic parliament, Mbete is nonetheless one of the Party’s Presidential hopefuls.
We should also recall that soon after the Constitutional Court judgment which clarified Mbete’s powers on the secret ballot matter, Zuma told the opposition in Parliament, that the demand for a secret ballot was unfair “because you are trying to increase the majority you don’t have.”
On that day, Zuma revealed more than he concealed. The statement was, in reality, an inadvertent expression of fear not of the opposition, but ANC MPs whom he suspects or matter-of-factly knows might vote for his removal. Whichever it is, Zuma is not certain of the loyalty of the totality of ANC MPs to guarantee his stay in power.
What with the infuriating clever black, ANC MP Dr.Makhosi Khoza, who will not stop talking? How many other ANC MPs, Zuma must be wondering, secretly agree with her but unlike Khoza, are as shrewd and wily as the peasants of Nkandla, who queued with him to cast their votes on August 3 last year, engaging in respectful banter with His Excellency, only to vote for the Inkatha Freedom Party in the secrecy of the voting booth?
The lesson of that experience cannot be repeated, especially when Zuma’s personal interests are threatened, and when he can put a stop to such puerile notions as voting with one’s conscience.
With the secret vote rejected, the usual ANC suspects and their adopted children, more appropriately, their illegitimate broods of the like of Mzwanele Manyi and Andile Mngxitama, will pop champagne bottles in celebration of what in effect would have been a hallow victory. The opposition will more than likely hurry back to the Constitutional Court to argue that Mbete’s decision was irrational, arbitrary and whimsical. The EFF has in fact already indicated its intention to do so.
The court is most likely to rule in favour of the opposition, albeit reluctantly, forcing Mbete to organise a secret ballot on “a proper and rational basis;” not in the “arbitrary and whimsical” manner of her ways.
With their salaries secure, at least until 2019, estimating that Zuma’s ejection stands to improve the ANC’s electoral fortunes (a not so implausible guess) and desirous of returning to parliament after 2019, ANC MPs may ignore the subjective decrees of Luthuli House and vote not so much with their consciences as in their self-preservation.
This would portend a series of mostly negative consequences for Zuma and his hangers-on. Weakened by this crash, they would find themselves immediately at a great disadvantage, less or worse still unable to bargain accommodation or a safe passage.
And so begins the second scenario, one which portends Yeats’ Second Coming for the ANC and the country. Zuma’s instincts being on the imprudent, things can fall spectacularly apart. And very fast.
The stakes are already high at present. The second scenario makes matter acute. Zuma’s 783 corruption charge sheet is due before the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on September 15. The judiciary being so far the country’s only uncaptured branch of government, we can safely predict that the SCA is unlikely to rule in Zuma’s favour.
In such an eventuality, his delay tactics will once again kick in, with the likelihood that the case may end up before the Constitutional Court. He is likely to lose there too. But losing legal cases is the least of Zuma’s worries. He does not pay the legal costs from his own pocket; he is not one to care about public funds either.
Besides the 783 charges, the Gupta emails suggest that a professional, independent and self-respecting prosecution agency might have reason to quadruple the number of charges currently hanging over Zuma’s head. One can see how staying in power is so crucial for Zuma and his hangers on.
So, he can be expected to up the gear on the ransom to which he has held the country. Feeling trapped and understanding the consequences of losing the war, he could become dangerously cruder.
We can reasonably anticipate a plethora of interrelated and nerve-wracking developments. He would less and less focus on what little attention he already pays to governance. The casualties are not difficult to identify. One of the more immediate one would be an already struggling economy whose position will be worsened by the predictable avalanche of ill-informed, desperate and reckless rhetoric which will render government’s policy trajectory less certain.
With the December ANC conference fast approaching, the greater and destructive focus on it by the belligerent factions will serve to exacerbate the country’s misfortunes, more so internal ANC and national security uncertainty. It is not unlikely that the ANC conference would collapse, ushering in a full-blown national crisis.
While these developments unfold, demands for the judicial commission on state capture, currently supported by key personalities within the ANC leadership, will likely increase rather than diminish. But as considerations of the 2019 General Elections begin to exercise the collective mind of the party, if it can master such capacity, whichever faction emerges hegemonic from the December ANC Conference (assuming that it takes place at all) will realise that it would have been better to insist on cleansing the criminal justice system than nurture a fetish for judicial commissions.
The media have either signalled or the penny has finally dropped on the ANC that a newspaper or television station might or shall approach the courts to declare the commission’s proceedings open to the public. No one needs any education of the fact that the material that will be canvassed before the commission does not lend itself to agreeable election public relations for any organisation, regardless of which faction is put to hang and dry.
The prevailing uncertainty would add to increased levels of corruption as the distance to the end of the road inspires more venality among strategically placed state officials and politicians. The absence of the centre would serve to breed anarchy of the kind whose gravitational force tips things over and apart.
The totality of this scenario would of course inspire a pessimistic and gloomy national mood in which the citizenry loses all trust and hope in their country’s future. Our ambassadors and high commissioners already have a tough job trying to shore up our international standing.
But no real life scenario ever unfolds outside of social and political factors. Unlike in 2007 and 2009, Zuma is in the sunset of his political career. ANC members and leaders have long begun to shop around for a new benefactor and they will not permit him a free reign as before.
The third scenario, therefore, is that of our redemption. All efforts at challenging Zuma in and outside the ANC eventually succeed, starting with a victory of anybody but a Zuma-connected candidate in the December conference and a rigorous clean-up of the state, state owned enterprises and bringing the corrupt to book.
Siyabulela Gebe is the Chairperson of the Pan African Youth Dialogue and a member of the ANCYL at Ward 73, Greater Johannesburg Region.