Publication: Sunday Independent Issued: Date: 2007-11-10 Reporter: Jeremy Gordin

Zuma's Floating Opera Turns Up The Heat

 

Publication 

Sunday Independent

Date

2007-11-10
Reporter Jeremy Gordin

Web Link

www.sundayindependent.co.za

 

Welcome back to our favourite soapie: the story of ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma, his trials (well, not quite yet) and tribulations with the National Prosecuting Authority, and his desire to be the country's premier citizen.

This week we had a new episode in the saga: four judgments in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Zuma-related cases - set against the backdrop of the ANC national conference, some five weeks away.

A soap opera is defined as an "episodic work of fiction". But Zuma's struggle is our reality. What's more, most South Africans would probably feel insulted by the Zuma saga being referred to as a soap opera. They would say that what happens to Zuma and at the ANC's Polokwane conference is deadly serious.

A soapie must also be presented as "ongoing" - to be watched every working day. But for most of us, the Zuma story is not ongoing. It only surfaces from time to time, usually when there is court action.

So a better name for the Zuma story would be - to borrow the title used in 1955 by the American author John Barth for his first novel - The Floating Opera.

Barth suggested that life was like a showboat with a flat open deck, on which a play was performed continuously. The boat drifts up and down the river and the audience sits along both banks.

The audience therefore catches only that part of the plot that happens to unfold as the boat floats by. And then it has to wait until the tide runs back again to catch another snatch. This means the audience often doesn't know what is going on.

So let's begin with a quick catch-up session.

In June 2005, Schabir Shaik, a Durban businessman, who called himself Zuma's "business adviser", was found guilty of fraud and corruption.

He was judged corrupt for having given money to Zuma with the intention of receiving help from Zuma in certain business ventures. Whether Shaik ever received any tangible "help" is another matter. All the state had to prove was that he had an intention.

Shaik was also found to have set up a bribe for Zuma from a French arms company, Thint. In exchange for money, Zuma was to have helped quash the state investigation into the multi-billion-rand arms deal, which was alleged to have been in part corrupt and in which Thint and some of Shaik's companies were involved.

The judge who convicted Shaik, Hilary Squires, made it clear that Zuma was not on trial. But he also noted, not unreasonably, that when it comes to corruption, it takes two (or more) people to tango.

Almost immediately, President Thabo Mbeki sacked Zuma, then the deputy president.

Shakespeare's Hamlet said to his mother that she might have waited for the food at his father's wake to have grown cold before marrying Hamlet's uncle. Similarly, Mbeki could have waited for Shaik to appeal before firing Zuma. But Mbeki didn't.

So Vusi Pikoli, the national director of public prosecutions, also charged Zuma precipitously - before the end of June 2005.

The first problem was that it seems that, even though the case against Shaik turned out to be successful, state prosecutors seemed uncertain that they could prosecute Zuma equally successfully with the evidence they had.

Money laundering

Second, the Scorpions had learned that money had allegedly continued to be paid by Shaik to Zuma after Shaik had been charged. In addition, Zuma had allegedly been involved in a little tax evasion and money-laundering - issues that had not come up in the Shaik trial.

So the Scorpions launched a series of dawn raids in a bid to find evidence of the payments that allegedly happened after Shaik was charged and of money-laundering and tax evasion.

The raids were carried out in August 2005 at the Johannesburg office of Zuma's former attorney, Julekha Mohamed; the Durban office and homes of Zuma's present attorney, Michael Hulley, and Zuma; and the Pretoria office of Thint.

Zuma and Thint cried foul. They said the powers given to the Scorpions by their search warrants had been "too wide". A Durban judge and a Johannesburg one agreed.

But the Scorpions appealed these judgments. What this meant was that when they came to court against Zuma and Thint in September 2006, in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, they could not legally use documents they had grabbed in their raids. So Judge Herbert Msimang threw out the case.

Meanwhile, time was flying and the ANC conference was drawing closer. And it looked as though Zuma was doing very nicely, thank you. In fact it looked very much as though he might well be the ANC's next president.

This positive attitude to Zuma was not because ANC members are all unethical, or do not care about the charges against Zuma, but because taking money from a friend (which is not, after all, theft) is not necessarily viewed as distastefully by ordinary people as it is by the statute book.

Also, Zuma is a struggle hero, a consensus-builder, an apparent champion of the common people, and is considered to have been a victim of Mbeki's desire to have a different successor. State machinery is believed to have been used against Zuma, as indeed it has.

In addition, Zuma does not exist in a vacuum and Mbeki, his main opponent in the succession race, has in recent months done some very strange things which have considerably weakened his position and made even his own supporters wary and jittery.

He handled the matter of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the minister of health, badly. He summarily, and without real explanation, dumped Billy Masetlha, the former director-general of intelligence, and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, the deputy minister of health. And Mbeki suspended Pikoli, the NDPP, apparently to protect the national police commissioner, Jackie Selebi.

Which brings us to this week's judgments in the SCA, which were about the August 2005 raids. The SCA found the warrants were not "over broad" and the Scorpions may therefore use the documents seized from Hulley/Zuma and Thint against Zuma and Thint.

Are these judgments major turning-points in our floating opera, as some people say? Do they signify "the end" for Zuma, just five weeks before the ANC conference? Do they mean that his succession bid is all over?

The short answers are: no and yes, but mainly no.

If the NPA opts to charge Zuma again before the ANC conference, it would make life very difficult.

But the NPA is unlikely to do so. This is because the indictment is a very complex one and is probably nowhere near complete. Second, to charge Zuma just before the conference would mean the country might erupt and Zuma would go to court and scream that being charged at this point equals "conspiracy" and an "unfair trial".

Third, one of the movers in the action against Zuma was clearly Pikoli. But he has been suspended and the Scorpions are in disarray.

Political analyst Adam Habib is doubtless correct: never mind global warming, this week's judgments are really going to ratchet up the temperature in the ANC.

This does mean influential people who are opposed to Zuma and/or Mbeki are going to push even harder for alternates.

Jeremy Gordin was named this week as the Webber Wentzel Bowens South African legal journalist of the year for his reporting of the Jacob Zuma legal saga
Related Articles

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin and Sunday Independent.