Going out with a bang
The writing has been on the wall for months: Scandals past and present had rendered Zuma a liability, and he needed to be gone well before the 2019 election. The first push came in December when he was ousted as president of the African National Congress (ANC) by his second-in-charge Cyril Ramaphosa. The second (and bigger) push came this week when his erstwhile deputy went one better, and assumed the presidency of South Africa itself.
It is not at all surprising that Zuma, a political survivor if there ever was one, managed to keep his would-be successors on tenterhooks until the very end. In a final televised speech he even threatened to
force a public vote of no-confidence; just the kind of embarrassment that Ramaphosa was desperate to avoid. Ultimately, however, Ramaphosa prevailed and South Africa found it had a new leader. One must marvel at Ramaphosa's filigreed brilliance in prising open
the protective cocoon of party apparatchiks who had hitherto preserved Zuma's position. The expert diplomat demonstrated once more why he was able not only to negotiate the end of apartheid but also to
mediate the disarmament of the Irish Republican Army!
Scandals
The sheer number and scale of the scandals, faux pas and mistakes that Jacob Zuma had accrued is dizzying. To begin with, his predecessor Thabo Mbeki had sacked him in 2005 for soliciting bribes from an arms manufacturer. Later the same year he was charged with the rape of a prominent AIDS activist (and daughter of his friend). During the trial he provoked further censure and ridicule by claiming that, knowing the woman had AIDS, he had prevented HIV transmission simply by taking a post-coital shower. At the time he was the head of South Africa's National AIDS council.
But focusing overmuch on the salacious aspects of Zuma's time in the spotlight would be a mistake. His larger offences were ones that have plagued the ANC ever since Mandela won the 1994 election: corruption, graft and nepotism.
The storm before the storm
Zuma was born in Nkandla, KwaZulu Natal province in 1942 to a family that would plant the seed of revolution at an early age. He had no formal education - a fact that would later became a key credential amongst the poor, uneducated labour class who would keep the scales tilted in his favour for far too long. As a young man he was strongly influenced by an older brother who had fought in the second world war, and in 1959 he joined a grassroots ANC organisation at the age of 17.
Zuma went on to cut his teeth in the South African Communist Party and the ANC's military wing (founded by Nelson Mandela). Four years later, in 1963, he was imprisoned for ten years alongside Mandela on Robben Island. Following his release he rose through the ranks of the ANC's leadership-in-exile. And it was while in exile (in Mozambique) that Zuma also met Thabo Mbeki, another future president of South Africa.
When Mandela became president in 1994 (with Mbeki as his deputy) Zuma was a Member of the Economic Council. And when Mbeki took over the presidency in 1999, Zuma was appointed Deputy President of South Africa. He then lost this position in 2005 due to the aforementioned arms-related corruption charges (which were eventually dropped, largely for procedural reasons). But despite that loss Zuma continued to enjoy broad support. And in 2007 he ousted Mbeki as ANC President. Once the charges against him were formally dropped, and the ANC won the 2009 election, Zuma was appointed President of South Africa.
Over the following decade rampant collusion between Zuma's cabal within the ANC and South Africa's business elite (particularly the disgraced, profligate Gupta family) led to myriad allegations and charges. More recently, there was also the matter of the
multimillion dollar renovation of his mansion - using public funds. Curiously it was this last impropriety more than any other that finally cast a shadow on his standing amongst the working class.
Now, Zuma faces
an impressive array of 18 separate charges, including money laundering, fraud and racketeering. But all this while South Africa's economy has sputtered, the inequality gap has yawned and social mobility has withered. This is Zuma's real legacy.
A new day
Cyril Ramaphosa will now be forced to draw on all his rhetorical and negotiating prowess
to steer South Africa out of the Mbeki-Zuma era. He has promised an anti-corruption purge within the ossified hierarchy of the ANC; yet somehow he must also bring the ANC along for the ride. Regional politics will also require his attention. And his party's natural allies in Zimbabwe, ZANU-PF, are dealing with their own moment of reckoning following the ouster of Robert Mugabe and the recent death of
opposition-leader-for-life Morgan Tsvangirai. To top it all off, Cape Town is about to run out of water.
Regardless of the challenges, this is
the best chance that the ANC, and South Africa, have had in two decades to realise their potential.
