Almost 60 years ago, prime minister Jan Smuts found himself humiliated at the United Nations (UN), whose charter he had recently helped to write. His United Party government had just passed the Asiatic Land Tenure Act of 1946. The result mainly of pressure from English-speaking people in Natal, this law drastically curtailed Indian land rights.

The UN gave SA’s Indians a new forum: they mobilised the government of India to attack Smuts there while the world listened. Thus it was that Smuts, at the behest of English-speaking voters, helped to make apartheid a global issue two years before the Afrikaners put the National Party into power.

Like Smuts, President Thabo Mbeki walks the global stage. Like Smuts, he is vulnerable. The founder of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development could hardly have gone to the coming Group of Eight meeting with Jacob Zuma still in office as deputy president. So Zuma had to go.

Yet even more important than travelling to Gleneagles with his head held high were the domestic reasons why Mbeki had to fire Zuma. He had to teach a lesson here at home, not least to MPs dancing for Zuma. And the more Zuma was able to mobilise support, the more important it became for Mbeki to act as he eventually did.

His timing was perfect. Front-page frenzy about ballooning Jacobean forces ensured that everyone anywhere who pays attention to Africa was waiting to see what Mbeki would do. When he did it, he therefore got more global attention than if he had acted swiftly. Not only was the attention laudatory, but the dismissal of the apparently popular Zuma made a right decision also a brave one.

Yet there should never have been a moment’s doubt anywhere that Zuma would be sacked. That doubts existed reveals scepticism about the depth of Mbeki’s commitment to fighting corruption.

Criticism that Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was appointed deputy president despite the so-called Oilgate scandal shows that not even the dismissal of Zuma has removed those doubts. Indeed, in removing Zuma, Mbeki has ensured he will himself be subject to sharper scrutiny than before. Lingering questions about the arms deal that led to Zuma’s downfall cannot be brushed aside as various ministers recently tried to do again, despite the verdict against Schabir Shaik

Juvenile criticism aside, the remarkable thing about that verdict was how widely it was accepted among opinion leaders of all races. Not only is Judge Hilary Squires white, he is also a one-time member of Ian Smith’s rebel Southern Rhodesian cabinet. Yet nobody serious even tried to play the race card. Here was justice being done, being seen to be done, and being accepted as having been done.

How different it might have been had the independence of the judiciary been previously undermined! The judge on the case would not have been designated by the judge president of KwaZulu-Natal, as Squires was. He would have been chosen by a centralised process presided over by the chief justice, but in practice run by a civil servant — the executive secretary in the chief justice’s office. This person would have been appointed by the justice minister, who would himself hold office only at the pleasure of the president.

Such a process is likely to result if Deputy Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Johnny de Lange’s draft legislation on the judiciary reaches the statute book.

The handling of the Zuma affair is already tainted by the view that he was unfairly stigmatised in 2003 when national director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka said there was a prima facie against him, but declined to prosecute.

Zuma is entitled now to a fair trial. SA needs to be convinced he will get a fair trial. And when he is convicted, or acquitted, the verdict must enjoy as much legitimacy as the Shaik one did.

Irrespective of how the verdict might go, Mbeki cannot afford any other kind of response to the process now set in motion with the decision of the national director of public prosecutions to prosecute Zuma.

The farther removed from that process the executive branch of government keeps itself, the better. De Lange’s bills should have the delete button applied to them.

Kane-Berman is CE of the South African Institute of Race Relations.

With acknowledgements to John-Kane Berman and the Business Day.