Stop enabling the ANC, give Zuma a double Pfizer

Jailing Jacob is a good start to ending the moral rot in our body politic. But we are in danger of drawing the wrong lessons from his dramatic minute-to-midnight jailing for contempt of court.

It is not the victory for law and order and constitutional democracy that it is being portrayed as. Zuma has behaved as he does because he – and the many other ANC cadres who daily and with impunity show their contempt of the rule of law – have a powerful enabler.

That enabler is the ANC.

The ANC’s failure to understand fully what a constitution means can be discerned in many of the revealing comments it made during the Zuma impasse.

Spokesperson Pule Mabe said the ANC called on members “to remain calm and respect the decision taken by [Zuma] to abide by the rulings of the court”. In other words, if you’re a former ANC leader, you have a choice whether or not you will abide by the law.

When ANC members supporting Zuma gathered in their hundreds outside his home, fired guns, waved spears and clubs and threatened violence against judges and police, they contravened several laws, including those governing the lockdown, firearms, incitement and intimidation.

Again, the ANC response is revealing. After first denying that there had been any illegal behaviour at Nkandla, a meeting with its national executive committee persuaded acting secretary-general Jesse Duarte to change her tune.

She then assured South Africa the perpetrators would be brought to book. The party, she said, was particularly concerned members of the disbanded uMkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association had threatened violence that could have led to a loss of life or injuries, in a “counter-revolutionary” manner “akin to … extreme right-wing elements”.

“When words such as ‘human shields’ were used, we sat up and we took note. Those are words used by terrorists,” Duarte said.

Suffice it to say that if these armed international counter-revolutionary terrorists threatening to use as human shields had indeed been right-wingers, a spell in the Naughty Corner would not have been the police or ANC response.

None of this is surprising. Police Minister Bheki Cele, previously so keen to be seen as the strong arm of the law that during an earlier lockdown he headed armed patrols of otherwise empty beaches to catch bikini-clad blondes, did everything possible to avoid having to order Zuma’s arrest.

It was only upon receiving advice from senior counsel that he would himself face contempt of court charges if he did not go ahead, that he complied.

If you want to assess the ANC commitment to the rule of law, measure it against the clamour that’s taking place within the party, calling for his release.

Former minister Frank Chikane says Zuma should be pardoned if he “admits he made mistakes”. Other party leaders are concentrating on early release on compassionate grounds.

Apparently, we should be concerned about the vulnerability to Covid of the man who a week ago was – without a mask – cavorting as up-close cheerleader to a spittle-spewing mob baying for the head of Justice Sisi Khampepe.

Give the man a Pfizer, I say. Make it a double.