Justice Malala on President Zuma

Justice Malala has written another great opinion piece on Times Live. It is just so good, that it would be a travesty not to share. I have taken the liberty to lift it whole for you to enjoy, if it is at all possible to take pleasure in reading about an obscenely disgraceful person.

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Zuma the wrecking ball

Just a month into his second term, President Jacob Zuma is politically exposed and his former friends are calling him names in parliament. Already, many within the ruling party have begun contesting for his position.

His performance in parliament last week was dismal and underlined what some of us have said since 2005, when Thabo Mbeki fired him: he is not fit to govern and is not fit to walk in the shoes of Oliver Tambo and Albert Luthuli. His first term as chief executive of South Africa Incorporated was an absolute disaster. His second will be worse.

His new cabinet is possibly the worst to sit around a table in the boardrooms of the Union Buildings since democracy dawned. It is a collection of cronies, incompetents and yes-men. It is a cabinet in which the few talented and worthy individuals are overwhelmed by the compromised.

Zuma stood up in parliament last week and brazenly told us something we all know – we have run out of electricity. The only reason we still have lights on in our homes is because Eskom is diverting electricity to consumers while the mines and other big users are being starved of the stuff. Expect major outages when the platinum miners go back to work.

Now, you would think that a president would send his best people to deal with the sort of energy crisis we face.

Zuma did, after all, spend the biggest chunk of his speech going on about our energy challenges. How does he solve this clear and present danger?

He has appointed possibly the most controversial, divisive and incompetent minister of his last administration, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, to the energy portfolio. You have to wonder what kind of sick joke is being played on the electorate. In her report in December, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela said Zuma should act against Joemat-Pettersson because of her “reckless dealing with state money and services, resulting in fruitless and wasteful expenditure, loss of confidence in the fisheries industry in South Africa, alleged decimation of fisheries resources in South Africa and delayed quota allocations due to lack of appropriate research”.

But Zuma went and appointed her to what is potentially the most critical job in his administration. Within days she was telling the world that South Africa will be building a nuclear power plant.

And who will be building this facility? Ah, President Zuma’s new best friends, the Russian government. Let me give you a prediction, dear reader: In 2030 there will be a commission of inquiry in South Africa investigating “corruption related to a trillion-dollar nuclear deal”. This is another arms deal in the making. Mark my words.

You have to wonder who advised Zuma on some of his appointments. Siyabonga Cwele? Faith Muthambi? Nathi Mthethwa? It boggles the mind.

When he has a clear opportunity to do something extraordinary, the man chokes.

Why is an announcement that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa will run the National Development Plan not explicit in Zuma’s speeches? As usual, on this issue Zuma has done what he does best, he has poured uncertainty into the milieu.

On May 25, announcing his new cabinet, he said: “The National Planning Commission, as well as the performance monitoring and evaluation ministries in The Presidency, have been combined into one ministry to harmonise the planning and monitoring functions.”

He announced that the man in charge of this ministry is Jeff Radebe.

Last weekend the ANC, reacting to the bad news that two international ratings agencies found our economic future bleak, issued this statement: “The Deputy President, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, has been assigned the task of chairing the National Planning Commission and has overall oversight of the implementation and enforcement of the NDP across government.”

What is going on here? Does Zuma’s left hand know what the right hand is doing? I don’t think so. In fact, I think some distance is beginning to emerge between Zuma and his party. It seems to me the ANC wants some leadership, whereas Zuma prefers to keep things murky and divisive while he rules the roost. It is absolutely the wrong way to run a country.

Thankfully, it seems as if some in the ANC are waking up to the fact that the man is a liability. As a clearly ailing Zuma hobbled into parliament last week party branches across the country were beginning to caucus about who should succeed him when the party conference is held in December 2017.

The powerful KwaZulu-Natal branch could push for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma or Zweli Mkhize.

But the North West, Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Limpopo branches are saying Ramaphosa should be given a chance. Ramaphosa needs to send them a signal that he is ready to run.

Crucially, KwaZulu-Natal ANC leaders are saying they are prepared to back Ramaphosa, but would want to have Mkhize as his No2. This is where the sticking point lies: a place has to be found for ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, at present the most powerful man in the party.

It will be an interesting race, but Zuma could lobby hard for his former wife to succeed him.

Meanwhile, South Africa will just have to grit its teeth for another five long years with the liability that is Zuma.

Because the people have abrogated their responsibility…

How can an organisation that refused to have a personality cult built around Nelson Mandela allow itself to become a mere tool in the hands of Zuma? How can its leaders cast aside the party’s historical mission – to transform the lives of millions of poor black people and build a united, non-racial, prosperous and democratic country – to simply become gophers for Zuma?

That is the question being posed by Justice Malala, a newspaper columnist and host of a television show The Justice Factor, in an online newspaper today.

If you’re not familiar with South African politics, read this:

President Jacob Zuma is not a fool. He makes gaffes every week and has no idea what constitutionality means. But he is no fool.

He might not read – as has been alleged – but that does not mean he does not know what levers have to be cranked to ensure that he never gets inside a court.

Since he became the president of the ANC in 2007, he has overseen the most concerted and successful assault on the country’s independent institutions.

The judiciary is today facing a major crisis of confidence because of cases involving him at the Constitutional Court.

The minute he won the ANC presidency in Polokwane, the Scorpions – which had been investigating him- were disbanded. It was quick, cruel and ruthless.

Over the past few months it has been the public protector’s turn. In that time, we have witnessed concerted and coordinated attacks from parliament, the executive and various wings of the ANC on the office led by possibly the most admired “public servant” in the nation today – Thuli Madonsela.

This past week we had the extraordinary sight of our security cluster – which has over the past few weeks made fools of themselves saying all kinds of nonsense about Madonsela – turning on the populace and declaring that publication of pictures of the taxpayer-funded Nkandla monstrosity were illegal and that the full might of the law would come down on those who dared to do so. All this for one man: Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.

The man is not a fool. He has managed to get Africa’s oldest liberation movement to become a tool for his protection.

Whatever he does – whether it is his friends the Guptas landing their planes at military key points with impunity or a hideous compound being built for him for R208-million, the man has got the party rushing to do his bidding.

And so one has to ask: Which ANC is this?

How can an organisation that refused to have a personality cult built around Nelson Mandela allow itself to become a mere tool in the hands of Zuma? How can its leaders cast aside the party’s historical mission – to transform the lives of millions of poor black people and build a united, non-racial, prosperous and democratic country – to simply become gophers for Zuma?

Yet that is what the party’s 86-member national executive committee has become.

ANC MPs are now introducing legislation that is aimed solely at protecting this one man.

Across the land, provincial party leaders hobble state machinery merely to protect and keep this one compromised leader out of jail and in power.

It is an incredible sight.

Once proud leaders who served our nation in exile, in the United Democratic Front and in trade unions now scrape and bow before one man.

The ANC no longer has leaders. It has zombies who mindlessly follow this one leader and do his bidding.

It is quite extraordinary.

What has happened to the culture of debate and contestation that once permeated this movement?

What happened to the pride that made this once great organisation stand up and expel people who muddied its name?

How can this lot walk in the shoes of Albert Luthuli, AP Mda, Anton Lembede, Pixley kaIsaka Seme?

So, as we look at the extraordinary lengths that the current ANC “leadership” has gone to defend an embarrassment of a leader whose entire family seems to be infused by a shocking culture of entitlement – Zuma’s brother, Michael, last week admitted using his name to swing tenders to his benefactors – we have to ask: Where is the ANC?

The answer is heartbreaking: The ANC is compromised; it is lost.

It has lost its moral compass and its leadership of society.

The man at its head is a reflection of what the party is: ill-disciplined, compromised and unprincipled.

The desperation one sees among the ANC’s leaders is a reflection of this. When a man as widely admired as Cyril Ramaphosa has no other argument to convince a voter to still support the ANC than “the Boers will return”, then you know that this is a movement that is both intellectually and morally bankrupt. The emperor and his lieutenants have no clothes.

And so we will remember the reign of Zuma. We will remember it not for its achievements but for the cowardice, callowness and bankruptcy of the leadership that he brought with him. We will remember his lackeys for their bowing and scraping and their destruction of the continent’s greatest liberation movement. What an ignominious end for the party of Mandela.

The answer may be simpler than we think! The people who continue to support this outrage are those who continue to vote for him.

There’s only one way out of this mess. And you have the responsibility to use it well at the next elections.

The government totally sucks…

You all know that already, right?

In this video [watch till the end – it gets better and better] Jack Black may be singing about the US of A, but right here in South Africa, they’re doing their damndest to win the race for suckiest government ever.

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But on a serious note, Justice Malala, a columnist in the online Times Live had this to say about the ANC this week, all of it absolutely true:

This is not an organisation whose mission is to liberate ordinary South Africans from poverty. It is a party that has been hijacked by people whose aim is to loot the state as quickly as possible before the taps are shut.

Let the world, still enchanted by the South African rainbow dream, know that it has turned out to be just a fucking nightmare.