Sleaze and slander involving leading ruling party politicians, including former Deputy President Jacob Zuma, trouble South Africa whose freedom from apartheid rule is only a decade old.
WHAT is one to make of the extraordinary, perhaps even murky, developments that are currently taking place within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and, more broadly, in the government of South Africa?
The most dramatic of these was the decision announced by President Thabo Mbeki at a joint session of both Houses of Parliament in Cape Town on June 14 to "release the Hon. Jacob Zuma from his responsibilities as Deputy President of the Republic and Member of the Cabinet", meaning, in plain words, to dismiss him.
The decision to dismiss Jacob Zuma is one of the high points - one would be anticipating too much to say that it was the culmination - of a series of events whose beginnings go back to and, equally, also follow from, the facts, circumstances and rumours, not to speak of planted stories, surrounding the "strategic defence procurement packages" that the then just-two-year-old democratic government decided to enter into, following the recommendations of the May 1996 White Paper on National Defence. As recapitulated in the Joint Investigative Report into the Strategic Defence Procurement Packages (November 2001), prepared by the Public Protector, the Auditor-General (A.G.) and the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), all "high constitutional authorities", the White Paper provided for a Defence Review whose object was "to elaborate on the policy framework based on the long planning of such issues as structure, force design, force levels and armaments".
After complex and prolonged internal discussions involving various options of the components of the package and related issues, the Defence Review was approved by Parliament in April 1998. The contract with the various contracting parties was signed on December 3, 1999, by when Thabo Mbeki had succeeded Nelson Mandela as President. The total cost (contract price) of the Strategic Defence Package, which flowed from and was an integral part of the Defence Review, which involved the purchase of a variety of armaments for the South African National Defence Force, was officially put at Rand 30.3 billion, at the time of the signing of the contract. Later it was estimated that the cost would go up to Rand 43 billion, based on the expected depreciation of the rand's exchange value between the signing of the contract and the date(s) of delivery of the contracted goods.
Given the scales of the money involved, it was inevitable that the integrity of the whole deal would be questioned and there would be charges of corruption and kickbacks - an inescapable part of every multi-billion dollar arms deal, even one entered into with the greatest care and transparency. Following much controversy in Parliament and the media, the whole deal was eventually referred to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of the Public Protector, A.G. and the NDPP. As recapitulated in the JIT report, the investigation was essentially about "probity", that is, whether those representing the government had conducted business diligently, properly and in the best interest of the country and whether the contracting parties had followed the rules of good faith and fairness.
While finding some "weaknesses" in the procurement process, the JIT report concluded that "no evidence was found of any improper or unlawful conduct by the government. The irregularities and improprieties... point to the conduct of certain officials of the government departments involved and cannot... be ascribed to the President or the Ministers involved in their capacity as members of the Ministers' Committee or Cabinet. There are therefore no grounds to suggest that the government's contracting position is flawed". As recalled by President Mbeki in his address to Parliament announcing the sacking of his deputy, while finding no basis for allegations of impropriety in respect of the "primary contracts", the JIT report called for further investigations on matters pertaining to "secondary contracts", that is, those in which the arrangements were essentially between the companies chosen as primary contractors and third-party corporate sub-contractors, though the government may have formally played a role to ensure reliability and cost-effectiveness.
Thus, following further investigations arose the trial of Schabir Shaikh, who belongs to a well-known Durban family deeply involved in the liberation struggle. Two brothers, Shamin `Chippy' Shaikh and Mo Shaikh, entered government, the first as an official in the Ministry of Defence and the second in the intelligence service. Shamin Shaikh rose to be the Chief of Acquisitions of the Department of Defence and in that capacity was a key figure in the negotiations to buy arms. Mo Shaikh had worked in the area of intelligence in the ANC in exile. A third, Schabir Shaikh, went into business. Among Schabir Shaikh's business interests were three companies that were "strong contenders in the Corvette programme as one of the subcontractors of the Combat Suite" (in the words of the JIT report) which he controlled through a holding company, Nkobi Holdings Ltd.
Among the charges brought against Schabir Shaikh were that he was in unauthorised possession of "secret documents" relating to the defence deal; that he had brokered an annual bribe of Rand 500,000 paid to Jacob Zuma by Thales, a French armaments company, in expectation of special favours in the defence deal; that these payments were corruptly made in furtherance of an ongoing scheme aimed at influencing Jacob Zuma by using his friendship with him and his position as his financial adviser to further his business interests. The decision to prosecute Schabir Shaikh on such charges finally lay with the Bulelani Ngcuka, the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) and one of the authors of the JIR.
AT this point the script gets rather murky. For if paying bribes to Jacob Zuma formed part of the charges against Schabir Shaikh, where does it leave the alleged bribe-giver? Further, at a media briefing in Pretoria on August 23, 2004, well before the trial of Schabir Shaikh began at the Durban High Court on October 11, 2004, Ngcuka said that while there was enough evidence to prosecute Jacob Zuma too in respect of the charges that had been brought against Schabir Shaikh, he was not certain that he had a "winnable case" against Jacob Zuma and was therefore not prosecuting him. This was part of a sustained campaign of a peculiar phenomenon in democratic South Africa - "trial by media" - an expression that Ngcuka is believed to have actually used while explaining what he had in mind for Jacob Zuma during a media briefing limited only to African journalists, an even murkier aspect of these developments, where those in authority cynically use the media (which, having their own agenda, even more cynically allows themselves to be thus used) in factional fights within the establishment.
Jacob Zuma promptly complained to the Public Protector. against the way he was being investigated though no specific charges had been filed against him, and without him being formally informed of the matter. He complained about leaks to the media by the prosecuting authority about the investigation. The Public Protector upheld the complaint, resulting in a blazing row involving the NDPP and the Justice Minister, all "high constitutional authorities", not to speak of Jacob Zuma, the Deputy President. However, the Public Protector's report was upheld by Parliament and, in due course both Justice Minister Penuell Maduna and NDPP Bulelani Ngcuka resigned.
But this did not mean an end to Jacob Zuma's woes. Evidence produced at the over-seven-month-long trial (October 2004-June 2005) seemed to implicate Jacob Zuma deeper than ever in the crimes for which Schabir Shaikh was being tried as an accessory, if not an actual participant in these crimes. In a famous exchange with the prosecutor, Schabir indeed claimed that it was not he but Jacob Zuma who was on trial.
The trial had many surprises and unexpected twists and turns, but none more startling than the judgment. While finding Schabir Shaikh guilty on all the three counts of which he was charged, Judge Hilary Squires of the Durban High Court also found that "a generally corrupt relationship" had existed between Jacob Zuma and his financial adviser. This was not a casual aside. Jacob Zuma's name appears on virtually every page of the 161-page judgment, though the accused before him was quite another person. But then, the gravamen of the charges against Schabir Shaikh related, organically and inescapably, to his "corrupt financial relationship". A week after he was found guilty, Schabir Shaikh was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. The judgment is under appeal before the Supreme Court of Appeals.
Less than a week later, Jacob Zuma was dismissed from his position as Deputy President and as a member of the Cabinet. Less than another week later, the National Prosecuting Authority, meaning the State of South Africa, announced that it would be prosecuting Jacob Zuma on two charges of corruption under the Corruption Act of 1992, the very legislation under which Schabir Shaikh was tried and convicted. According to a report in The Star (Johannesburg) of July 1, 2005, the list of state witnesses handed over to the Jacob Zuma camp was "a carbon copy of the list in the Schabir Shaikh case".
Despite being sacked as Deputy President, Jacob Zuma continued to remain Deputy President of the ANC. Even after being charged, Jacob Zuma continued to enjoy substantial support within the ANC and from the South African Communist Party (SACP), the trade union federation Cosatu, ANC's partners in the Tripartite Alliance, and other structures of the ANC such as the ANC Youth League, which has been a very vocal Zuma supporter. Indeed, this support to Zuma was rather stridently expressed in the days following the dismissal, in some cases accompanied with the burning of T-shirts bearing the portrait of Mbeki. Offers by Jacob Zuma to withdraw from active participation in ANC structures had to be turned down by the ANC executive following pressure from below.
However, there have been some subtle shifts in this correlation of forces following another, even more startling, development in the Jacob Zuma saga. Like so many other developments, this too began with an inspired leak in a newspaper of investigations into an accusation of rape brought against Jacob Zuma by a 31-year-old woman, who still formally remains unnamed. The alleged rape took place in Zuma's Johannesburg home on the night of November 2. The alleged victim had accepted Jacob Zuma's offer to spend the night at his home, for Zuma was for her a father figure, a colleague in exile of her father who too had been an active member of the ANC. Formal indictment by the National Prosecuting Authority, however, followed only about four weeks later, on December 6, when Jacob Zuma appeared in court. The trial is to begin before the Johannesburg High Court on February 13, 2006. Jacob Zuma has, however, denied the allegation, noting in his statement that there had been "four weeks of intense and distorted media reports on this issue, even before the police investigations began in earnest". But he decided to withdraw from active participation in all the structures of the ANC, remaining only as Deputy President.
THE trial by the media is, however, far from over. Rapport, an Afrikaans newspaper published from Johannesburg, recently carried a report about Jacob Zuma and Schabir Shaikh sharing the favours of a commercial sex worker identified as "Robin". The affidavit on which the report was based was apparently leaked to the newspaper by Scorpions, the striking arm of the National Prosecuting Authority, a structure which according to Jacob Zuma is bent upon destroying him personally and politically. (There was a memorable encounter which very nearly culminated in a shootout between a team of Scorpions and Zuma's bodyguards when the former raided Jacob Zuma's home in Johannesburg searching for documents soon after charges of corruption had been filed in court.)
More recently, the Mail and Guardian of Johannesburg carried a report of Jacob Zuma confessing to Blade Nzimande, Zwelenzima Vavi and Willie Madisha, top SACP and Cosatu leaders, at a meeting in his rural homestead in KwaZulu Natal that he indeed had sex with the young woman who has accused him of rape but that the sex was consensual, not rape. Despite emphatic denials by Jacob Zuma, as well as by the SACP ("a big lie") and Cosatu ("a downright lie"), the newspaper has simply responded with the standard, argument-stopping line: We stand by our report.
Do these developments bespeak power struggles within the ANC, to which the ANC is no stranger, or are they merely manifestations of extraordinary moral and legal probity that would spare none, not even persons at the highest levels of leadership? Probably there are elements of both. Thabo Mbeki's second term as president of the ANC comes to an end in 2007 and his second term as the country's President too comes to an end two years later. Until now it was assumed that Jacob Zuma would seamlessly succeed Mbeki in both these positions, as Mbeki himself did after just one term of Nelson Mandela as ANC president (then three-year term) and as State President.
Ten years into freedom and democracy, such certainties were bound to be challenged. What is disturbing, however, is the sleaze and slander that seems to have overtaken what should after all be legitimate competing for political office and position in democratic structures, without the belittling and blackguarding and worse of political opponents who only so recently were comrades in struggle and even now are close colleagues and comrades, using organs of state to advance personal or factional agendas, unmindful of the larger damage inflicted on the democratic state.
Perhaps such a development is also inevitable, given the environment in which democratic systems function. In April 2001, over a year before the ANC's Stellenbosch National Conference was due to be held, Jacob Zuma refuted "rumours and so-called intelligence reports" which he ascribed to "faceless, destructive quarters" suggesting that hewas planning to challenge Mbeki for leadership at the conference. Less than a week before Jacob Zuma made the statement, the ANC's National Executive Committee noted that "forces opposed to change" were "trying to create divisions within the ANC, from the presidency downwards" and specifically referred to attempts by the media to undermine the party's leadership.
Within days, sleaze and slander followed when in a radio programme a leading journalist, Max du Preez, suggested that President Mbeki was a "womaniser", that this was "publicly known", and that South Africans should begin talking about what kind of a man their President was. Soon thereafter Winnie Madikizela-Mandela joined the act, disclaiming that she had ever written a letter to Jacob Zuma accusing Mbeki of sleeping around, in this case with the wife of another senior ANC leader (vide The Hindu, April 5, April 12, April 15, April 22 and June 19, 2001).
Such are the components of Games People Play, even people who inspired generations living far away from their land to identify themselves with and materially contribute to the South African liberation struggle. Only, in these games the stakes are much higher, for they also involve the future of millions of people still struggling to secure the benefits that are their entitlement following their liberation.
