Opinion & Analysis

Why do good people do bad things?*1 After all, we all have our secrets and, mostly, we try to be the best we can. I have no doubt the same would apply to fraudster Schabir Shaik and his friend, Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who is widely liked — loved even — often by people who would have been disadvantaged by his corrupt relationship with Shaik.

Reading our own immediate reactions to the Shaik verdict and, then, the wave of similar condemnation in the Sunday press, I felt, I confess, a little sad for them.

Zuma has family who adore him and who will be agonised by the calls for his removal from office from across the political spectrum. Similarly, Shaik has a wife and a family who must be gutted by the verdict. I am so sorry for them.

I don’t know how societies find the right mixture of compassion and condemnation when condemnation is necessary. I suspect not many do but perhaps we could try, even if people often see compassion as an exploitable weakness. ?

Nevertheless it is unedifying to see Zuma responding to the judgment the way he did. I-have-not-been-charged-therefore-I-have-done-nothing-wrong is an idiotic way to respond to the obvious inappropriateness*2 of his relationship with Shaik. It spells out, if ever it were not clear, that the deputy president in some critical areas cannot tell right from wrong.?

I remember once writing an editorial criticising a cabinet minister for visiting mining magnate Brett Kebble at home in order to help sort out one of Kebble’s many political and/or legal problems. Politicians just shouldn’t be that close to business, I argued. The leader drew a sneering response from our columnist*3 David Gleason, who seemed to think the efforts of his good friend Kebble (a passionate Zuma fan) to build ties to selected politicians perfectly reasonable, if not downright necessary.*4

I didn’t respond to Gleason even though it pained me at the time. But I was reminded of the moment on reading Gleason’s attack on the Shaik judgment for today's paper.

I am sure he won’t mind me saying his piece is much more politically partisan than the trial he attacks and he becomes, I think, the only adult openly to play the race card in criticising the judgment. Brett will be pleased.?

Probably the most impressive thing about the serious political reaction to Hillary Squires’ judgment has, in fact, been the absence of race and accusation. Squires is a white man and was, indeed, a member of one of Ian Smith’s governments in the then Rhodesia and I think the African National Congress (the grown-up wing) is to be congratulated for taking the judgment at its meticulous face value.

The Zuma camp’s initial reaction was to fight back. That was on Friday when he was in Zambia. The judgment was to be attacked as “too western” and for failing to appreciate that African friendships are somehow different. “Ubuntu”, we were going to be told, somehow makes fraud between friends different. It won’t work, of course, and the fightback weakens by the hour. There is nothing about an African cheat that makes him or her less disgraceful than a French one (just for instance). ?

Back to the top. I am so sorry for Jacob Zuma. But he has to go. Imagine the message we would be sending to the world if he ever became president.

Perhaps the Zuma/Shaik/Kebble camp has a Plan B for the Mbeki succession. Kgalema Motlanthe?

With acknowledgements to Peter Bruce and the Business Day.

*2  Let alone unobvious inappropriateness.

*3  Does this columnist increase the circulation and advertising revenue for otherwise the best daily newspaper in the country?

*4  Mr Motlanthe: Who is the real culprit behind this matter?

• Dr Mbeki?
• Dr Shaikh?
• Dr Young?
• Dr Zuma?

(in alphabetical order)

• None of the above?