{"id":193653,"date":"2021-06-30T13:23:18","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T11:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/jacob-zuma-isnt-a-man-with-a-cause-just-a-wily-politician-trying-to-evade-the-law\/"},"modified":"2021-06-30T13:23:18","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T11:23:18","slug":"jacob-zuma-isnt-a-man-with-a-cause-just-a-wily-politician-trying-to-evade-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/jacob-zuma-isnt-a-man-with-a-cause-just-a-wily-politician-trying-to-evade-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacob Zuma isn’t a man with a cause. Just a wily politician trying to evade the law"},"content":{"rendered":"
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South Africa\u2019s Constitutional Court ruling<\/a> to imprison the country\u2019s former president, Jacob Zuma<\/a>, was unprecedented. But it wasn\u2019t unexpected. The author of the majority judgment, Justice Sisi Khampepe, captured the inevitability of the outcome somewhere in the middle the ruling, when she noted:<\/p>\n

\n

For I am not in the habit of playing my cards close to my chest, let me, at this earliest opportunity, state that Mr Zuma has earned himself a punitive sanction of direct and unsuspended sentence. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nor was Zuma\u2019s wrongful behaviour guided by any thought-out, long term strategy. It began as an instinctive reaction to evade accountability, but quickly hardened into a mode of behaviour as Zuma failed to come up with a reasonable defence.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the inevitability of the custodial sentence of 15 months.<\/p>\n

The Constitutional Court correctly understands its role in a much broader sense than simply deciding the constitutionality of matters before it. Situated at the helm of South Africa\u2019s judiciary, it is the leader of the three constituent elements of our democracy. <\/p>\n

No ordinary act of defiance<\/h2>\n

The Constitutional Court settles disputes between contending parties based on the commonly agreed set of basic rules, also known as the social contract, adopted at the inception of South Africa\u2019s democratic order. The fact of citizenship binds South Africans to abide by these basic rules in order to assure their collective well-being. <\/p>\n

A threat to that collective well-being arises when the ability of the Constitutional Court to enforce collective agreements is challenged.<\/p>\n

Zuma\u2019s conduct challenged the country\u2019s normative foundation. He didn\u2019t just refuse<\/a> to appear before the Zondo Commission<\/a> of inquiry into state capture and corruption, but disobeyed<\/a> an order of the Constitutional Court. Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, chair of the commission, had successfully convinced the Constitutional Court to order Zuma<\/a> to appear before the commission, following repeated refusals. This meant that, unlike everybody else, Zuma was exempting himself from the law that ought to apply equally to everybody. <\/p>\n

Because he is a former president, Zuma\u2019s refusal was no ordinary act of defiance. According to Justice Khampepe, he enjoys a \u201cunique and special political position\u201d, which imbues him with<\/p>\n

\n

a great deal of power to incite others to similarly defy court orders because his actions and any consequences, or lack thereof, are being closely observed by the public. If his conduct is met with impunity, he will do significant damage to the rule of law.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even more worrisome to the Constitutional Court was that Zuma was not just a no-show in court, or at the commission. He made statements<\/a> that were inflammatory and offensive towards judges, denouncing them as part of a political conspiracy to jail him. <\/p>\n

Zuma was effectively inciting the public against the courts. He had positioned himself as a nemesis of the judiciary, which is a critical custodian of our democratic order. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, the Constitutional Court was forced to choose between two courses: capitulate to Zuma\u2019s megalomania, or uphold the rule of law. Capitulation was never an option, as Justice Khampepe recalled Nelson Mandela\u2019s counsel<\/a> at the inauguration of the Constitutional Court back in 1995:<\/p>\n

\n

We expect you to stand on guard not only against direct assault on the principles of the constitution, but against insidious corrosion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now that Zuma faces prison some appear bewildered about the intention of his actions.<\/p>\n

Motives<\/h2>\n

Why did he defy the law so brazenly in the face of possible imprisonment? Is this part of some hidden strategy we don\u2019t know about? <\/p>\n

No \u2013 there\u2019s no hidden strategy here. Zuma simply had no legal defence. That showed at his initial appearance<\/a> at the commission. He told a long tale, trying to stitch together unrelated incidents in an attempt to paint himself as a victim of an international conspiracy. One of such incidents \u201cto deal\u201d with him, Zuma mentioned, was his removal as chief of counter-intelligence. <\/p>\n

What he conveniently left out of his testimony that day was that former president Thabo Mbeki<\/a>, who was then his closest ally from back in the late 1970s, had also been removed as the ANC\u2019s leading negotiator \u2013 a position he had assumed from the mid-1980s. And the instigators<\/a> of this change of guard were no international conspirators, but his own leftist comrades in the African National Congress, Joe Slovo<\/a> and Mac Maharaj<\/a>, with the newly elected secretary-general, Cyril Ramaphosa<\/a>, in the forefront.<\/p>\n

The old leftists just wanted to be in control of negotiations, and resented that they had no influence over Mbeki and Zuma. For Ramaphosa it was an opportunity to make history.<\/p>\n

Zuma\u2019s tale at the commission was fine as long as he was the one telling it, without anyone questioning him. The problem came when he had to be questioned. And the questions were not only going to expose the falsity of his tale, but also his complicity in many other instances of impropriety that had been presented to the commission. <\/p>\n

He tried discrediting witnesses with accusations of being spies. That trick did not work. The commission still insisted on his appearance, but Zuma knew doing so would be his undoing. To avoid exposure, a no-show at the commission became a plausible escape.<\/p>\n

Because people were likely to ask why he wasn\u2019t going to the commission when everybody else did, Zuma couldn\u2019t say no, angizi<\/em> (I am not coming)! He had to come up with an elaborate explanation, and so he went back to his old conspiracy theory. <\/p>\n

This time around Zuma threw in Zondo and his colleagues on the bench. He has labelled them agents in the hands of his enemies. This was just a cooked-up story to ward off questions about non-appearance at the commission.<\/p>\n

What then appears as an attempt at martyrdom \u2013 imprisonment over deference to courts \u2013 is really the result of Zuma having run out of ideas to defend himself at the commission. Martyrdom is almost impossible without a cause, and Zuma has none. Most people know that he\u2019s simply evading accountability for facilitating siphoning out of the public purse. <\/p>\n

There may be protests here and there, by his militia force trying to hustle a living, but there won\u2019t be any significant backlash. That is because Zuma simply has no cause. What\u2019s there to die for? The man is simply a wily politician trying to evade the law.<\/p>\n

Mcebisi Ndletyana is the author of Anatomy of the ANC in Power: Insights from Port Elizabeth, 1990 to 2019 (HSRC Press, 2020).<\/em><\/p>\n

Source: The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s Constitutional Court ruling to imprison the country\u2019s former president, Jacob Zuma, was unprecedented. But it wasn\u2019t unexpected. The author of the majority judgment, Justice Sisi Khampepe, captured the inevitability of the outcome somewhere in the middle the ruling, when she noted: For I am not in the habit of playing my cards close […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193654,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-193653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa-news-2","8":"tag-mypr","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/jacob-zuma-isnt-a-man-with-a-cause-just-a-wily-politician-trying-to-evade-the-law.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}