Zuma - SA’s one-man wrecking ball

December 30 2014 at 06:49am

The devastation caused by Jacob Zuma will take years to rebuild, even if he were to leave office
tomorrow, says the writer. File picture: Siphiwe Sibeko

Sars and the Hawks are the latest victims of President Jacob Zuma’s demolition of democracy, says
Max du Preez.

The devastation caused by that one-man wrecking ball – Jacob Zuma – will take years to rebuild,
even if he were to leave office tomorrow.

Sounds a bit harsh? Well, I don’t think the serious damage this president has inflicted upon our
political culture and our key institutions deserves softer condemnation.

Zuma was never going to match the analytical and intellectual acumen of his predecessors. But he
did represent a significant section of South African society that had been under-represented in the
top echelons since 1994 and he was our first Zulu-speaking president.

If he had surrounded himself with able ministers and advisers and listened to them he could still
have been an exemplary president. He was closer to the people than any of his predecessors and
had a strong reputation as a listener and a peacemaker.

But the after-effects of his corrupt relationship (in the words of a judge) with his financial adviser,
the debt he owed to those who put him in power and his obvious view that he was more of an
African chief than the president of a modern democracy led him on a different path.

His only talent we did experience was that of a political street fighter and manipulator, a talent he
had perfected as the head of intelligence of Umkhonto we Sizwe while in exile. He masterfully
outmanoeuvered those who stood up to him and instilled a culture of fear in his party. He richly
rewarded those loyal to him through a vast system of patronage and massively enriched his own
family and clan in the tradition of Mobuto Sese Seko (former president of Zaire, now the DRC) and
Robert Mugabe.

The golden thread running through his six years as president was his determination to stay out of
court (and jail) with more than 700 charges of corruption, fraud and racketeering hanging over his
head.

In the process he co-opted and corrupted the entire intelligence machinery, the National
Prosecuting Authority, the police service and the SABC. Tenderpreneurship blossomed and
corruption mushroomed with almost no consequences for perpetrators.

These tendencies moved a key member of the Tripartite Alliance, Cosatu general secretary
Zwelenzima Vavi, to declare back in 2010: “We’re headed for a full-blown predator state where a
powerful, corrupt and demagogic elite of political hyenas are increasingly using the state to get rich.”

The Nkandla scandal is the one that comes up first when citizens talk about corruption in
government. And yet it is a relatively small scandal – that is apart from the fact that the president
had lied to Parliament on not being aware of what was being built at his homestead and the fact that
he forced his party to lie for him and savage an institution of the Constitution, the public protector.

Zuma’s blatant interference with the criminal justice system is a much bigger scandal. It undermined
one of the central pillars of our democracy and stability. In recent weeks it became clear that two
other key state institutions have fallen victim to Zuma’s machinations – two institutions that have
been functioning better than most other thus far: the South African Revenue Service (Sars) and the
corruption-fighting Hawks unit.

Zuma appointed loyalist Tom Moyane as head of Sars in September after he had retired as head of
Correctional Services. His record at that department wasn’t a good one. Under his leadership the
department was rebuked several times by the auditor-general and Moyane was instrumental in the
release on medical parole of former police commissioner Jackie Selebi who was supposed to be on
his deathbed three years ago.

Moyane started a high-level purge of senior Sars officials. The State Security Agency had prepared
the ground for him by planting false stories on the journalists of a leading newspaper, who published
them without further investigation. Most of the information so published has now been discredited.

And last week the head of the Hawks, Anwar Dramat, was suspended, ostensibly because of the
deportation of a Zimbabwean four years ago. The real reason was that he refused to hand over files
on Nkandla, Northern Cape ANC leader John Block and other high-level corruption cases to the
police commissioner. He was fired because he was doing his job. Dramat confirmed this in a letter to
the minister, saying his investigations into the affairs of “influential persons” cost him his job.

It is Zuma Demolition Inc at work.

* Max du Preez is an author and columnist.