Newsmaker of 2021

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newsmaker of 2021

SL ASH AND BU R N

Former president Jacob Zuma showed this year that he will do anything to keep out of prison and keep a hold on power —even if that means SA has to go up in flames. The awful irony is that the looting of the fiscus during his presidency played no small role in creating the poverty so cynically exploited by his allies during the July unrest

Natasha Marrian m a r r i a n n @ f m .co. z a

o one individual has

Ndone more to delegitimise the state and subvert the rule of law in SA this past year than Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zu m a .

During his nine years as president, Zu m a’s treachery was hidden by the f a ç a de of officialdom. He was protected by a coterie of compromised ministers, submissive law enforcement agencies and an ANC whose moral compass had been jettisoned at the elective conference in Polokwane in 2007, when he assumed leadership of the party.

Yet it was only on leaving office that he shrugged off all pretence, and openly rode roughshod over the constitution and the law.

In the end, 2021 will be remembered as a year of legal reckoning for the former president: he was jailed for contempt of court, and failed —again —to have the court throw out arms-deal corruption charges against him. It was also a year in which the deadliest riots this side of apartheid played out across SA —ostensibly in Zuma’sname, and ably cheered on by his children.

Once the smoke cleared, more than 300 people lay dead, and the economy, already battered by Covid, was R50bn poorer.

The tinderbox On July 15 2019, Zuma sat in the witness box at the commission of inquiry into state capture, chaired by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo.

It had been a long road to get there. Back in 2016, then public protector Thuli Madonsela recommended in her “State of Capture” report that a commission of inquiry be set up to probe allegations of corruption and state capture. Her report contained disturbing evidence about Zuma’s allies the Guptas, his son Duduzane Zuma, and key ministers and government officials. At first, Zuma sought to have the report and its recommendations set aside on review (he failed). But things only got worse for him: after his chosen successor, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, lost to Cyril Ramaphosa at the 2017 ANC elective conference at Nasrec, one of Ra m a p ho s a’s first tasks as ANC president was to direct Zuma to set up the What it means: commission. Zuma, powerless The key without the cover of the ANC presquestion still is: idency, had to comply. will Cyril Rama- Still, it took over a year —after phosa be ready much wrangling with Zuma’s to act on the lawyers, and after more than 40 Zondo findings witnesses implicated him in —particularly wrongdoing —before Zuma f i n a l ly in an ANC agreed to appear before Zondo on election year? July 15 2019.

The days that followed were marked by obfuscation, denial, bizarre legal arguments and conspiracy theories —not least of which, in Zuma’s telling, was a 30-year plot by local and foreign spies to keep him away from the presidency and to kill him. These faceless, nameless foes continued stalking him, he said, even after failing to prevent his ascent.

Yet Zuma’s channelling of his inner Ian Fleming wasn’t even the highlight of his short stint in the witness box.

When faced with questions about how he had outsourced his executive power to Atul Gupta, Zuma became unstuck: his usual jovial, cocky veneer slipped, he shifted in his seat, cleared his throat repeatedly and fidgeted; his lawyers, seeing this obvious discomfort, jumped up and down.

Four days later, Zuma summarily withdrew from the commission, his testimony incomplete. It was, his lawyers said, the fault of the commission’s evidence leaders.

What followed was a feverish court battle, which included Zondo approaching the Constitutional Court to compel Zuma to appear before him. The court supported that application in January this year, but it wasn’t kind on Zondo either, accusing the commission of treating the former president with kid gloves.

Thus began Zuma’s road to prison.

Days after the ruling, Zuma announced he would not abide by the Constitutional Court order, which led the court to find him in contempt. It didn’t help Zuma’s case that he chose not to defend himself, even after then chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng gave him an additional opportunity to make his case.

Instead, Zuma did what he does best, whingeing about his plight and playing t he victim. It kick-started the second prong of his legal strategy: propaganda.

The spark Zu m a’swhingeing hinged on three themes: he was a victim of bias by the courts; his treatment by the judiciary was reminiscent of the apartheid era; and he was to be detained without trial.

All of this was a lie.

First, Zuma chose not to participate in a court hearing against him, failing to submit affidavits in his own defence. His strategy was to avoid participating in the state capture commission at all costs. You can see w hy . The allegations —for example, that he was a beneficiary of an intelligence slush fund —made the arms-deal corruption charges look like a Sunday picnic.

By refusing to participate, he could keep open one avenue to discredit the commission: challenge Zondo’s final report, and argue that his side of the story wasn’t heard. It was, effectively, the groundwork for a longer-term legal strategy to fend off any possible charges.

What he d id n ’t count onwas the damning judgment by the Constitutional Court —and a 15-month jail sentence for contempt.

So the Zuma propaganda machinery went to work again, whipping supporters into a frenzy, repeating his lie that this amounted to “detention without trial”and “judicial bias”.

Zu m a’s children fanned the flames too — particularly his daughter Duduzile ZumaSambudla, who took to Twitter with a vengeance. Elsewhere, WhatsApp groups driven by the ANC’s“radical economic t r a n s fo r m at io n ”faction, business lobby groups, xenophobic truckers and rogue Umkhonto we Sizwe operators aligned to Zuma all got to work.

As Zuma, at the 11th hour, handed himself over to the Estcourt correctional services centre on July 8, the fuse had been lit by his supporters. No matter what laws he had broken, his allies weren’t going to stand for his imprisonment.

In truth, Zuma’s jailing “was a victory for the rule of law”, says Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution executive director Lawson Naidoo. “For a former head of state to be sentenced to a jail term for contempt of court is hugely significant.”

But Zuma would serve fewer than two months before being released on medical parole —by none other than his long-term ally, the former correctional services commissioner Arthur Fraser.

Still, says Naidoo, the fact that he was jailed at all is important.

The fire By the morning of July 9, parts of KwaZuluNatal (KZN), and then Gauteng, were on fire.

Blockades and sporadic protests in support of Zuma had morphed into large-scale looting of malls; those directing events posted messages to WhatsApp groups.

All the while, Zuma-Sambudla continued to hold court in her taxpayer-sponsored castle at Nkandla, cheerleading from the side.

“Iziqhumane ZaKwaZulu …Si l i n d i l e [Shooters out in KwaZulu, we are waiting],” read one post, along with a clip of a machine gun being fired in the air. She tweeted pictures of burning trucks, highways ablaze, each with the location and the words “We see you, Amandla!”and #Fr e eJa co bZu m a .

What may have started as a grievance linked to Zuma had mutated into rioting and looting, fuelled by SA’s eye-watering levels of unemployment and desperate poverty. Thousands descended on shopping malls, looting electronics, liquor, clothing —any thing they could get their hands on.

More than 150 malls were attacked, along with 11 warehouses, eight factories and 161 liquor stores and factories. More than 300 people died, many trampled to death.

Months down the line, Citi economist Gina Schoeman says it’s still difficult to quantify the exact loss to the economy. But without the July unrest, the third-quarter GDP figures released by Stats SA last week, which showed the economy contracting 1.5% quarter on quarter, would have looked rather different. “There are various industry estimates of the cost in [rand] terms, but it is obvious from economic growth the cost of the event,”she tells the FM.

More insidiously, given that such violence is no longer considered an abstract risk but a real possibility, there will also probably be longer-term costs.

“Has [the violence] increased SA’s risk premium, which ultimately increases the

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AFP via Getty Images/Marco Longari

Picking up the scraps: Looters at a vandalised mall in Vosloorus during the unrest in July

cost of capital, which requires a higher rate of return on investment? For sure. It is part of the narrative when discussing uncertainty —politically, policy-wise and economically,” says Schoeman.

“[It ’s] a very big threat, especially when unemployment and inequality continue to worsen. It is difficult to argue for social stability with those record-high metrics. It adds to the growing view that political and policy uncertainty remain extremely high.”

This is now reflected in one of the steepest yield curves in the world, as the government must compensate for its higher risk premium by paying more interest on its debt.

The ashes After days of unrest, Ramaphosa deployed 25,000 soldiers to KZN and Gauteng. It was embarrassingly late in the game, and hap pened only after footage revealed a police force completely out of its depth. In some places the police were outmanned, but in o t he r s they nonchalantly sat on the sidelines, ignoring the unfolding mayhem.

If Zuma’s supporters acted, Ramaphosa’s administration dithered in response. As SA burnt, politicians did what they do best: very little, with a smattering of confusion.

The government couldn’t even agree on what to call the unrest. Ramaphosa characterised it as a “failed insurrection”, only to be contradicted days later by defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula. Then when state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo said she had provided the police with intelligence of possible riots weeks before they occurred, police minister Bheki Cele flatly denied this.

As far as bad farce goes, it was Wag the Do g meets the Keystone Cops.

In the end, much of the violence was curbed by communities who took matters into their own hands.

In KZN, that took on a deadly and decidedly racist flavour, with the Indian community in Phoenix targeting members of the black community in a spate of vigilante killings. In Soweto, Tembisa and parts of Mpumalanga, communities began defending their malls, stopping looters from destroying the already meagre infrastructure in sprawling informal settlements.

But perhaps the most demoralising part of it all was the aftermath.

As the dust cleared, the government vowed that the masterminds would be brought to book; the police claimed 12 key instigators were under investigation.

To date there have been 18 arrests —a nd no indication whether any of these were of the alleged masterminds of the violence. The specifics of the “i n s u r r e c t io n ”have yet to be detailed in any court papers.

In hindsight, independent political analyst Ralph Mathekga believes Ramaphosa was entirely wrong to characterise it as an attempted insurrection. If it was, he asks, why has the administration taken so long to properly effect arrests?

The “trigger point”, Mathekga says, was the ANC itself. In reality, it wasn’t an insurrection; it was an “environment of mutiny” created by a party lacking the basic discipline to resolve internal differences amicably, he explains.

Once the spark was lit, those instigating the riots lost control

But what the violence showed so clearly is that the collapse of SA’s security cluster is far worse than anyone imagined. The recent SA Human Rights Commission hearings on the riots have simply underscored this terrifying truth.

During the hearings, government departments were at each other’s throats. So, too, were Cele and national police commissioner Khehla Sitole, trading blame for the absence of any real policing during the unrest. It was hard to disagree with Mapisa-Nqakula, who

the news mouse A most co n s p i c u o u s a bs e n ce

Shamila Batohi

There may be no crisis at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), according to national director of public p ro s e c u t i o n s Shamila Batohi, but t h e re’s not much else either.

Certainly, no results to speak of. No cases in courtor culprits in the dock, let alone the prospect of an actual jail sentence for any of the moneygrubbing crooks who, having plundered SA’s purse, are still happily tearing about the country, Fendi-suited, Gucci-booted, swinging the odd Louis Vuitton bag.

South Africans might have hoped Batohi would be the FM’s newsm a ke r of 2021 for precisely that rare thing the public is desperate to see: accountability. Instead, s h e’s kept a lower profile than an ANC member at confession —other than her media briefing and parliamentary appearance last week, that is, where she was grilled over the resignation of Investigating Directorate (ID) head Hermione Cronje.

DA MP and former NPA prosec u to r Glynnis Breytenbachputs it succinctly: “We are three years down the line [from B a to h i ’s appointment], and we have