South Africa needs to dodge the bullet of Jacob Zuma

Only a thick-skinned, victim-card-playing politician like Jacob Zuma could claim his constitutional rights are being violated yet, effectively, also suggest that the cornerstone of our democracy – the Constitutional Court – must go.

Zuma’s bitter, rambling 23-page missive to the ANC – via his ally Ace Magashule’s secretary-general’s office – was a diatribe about how the courts had been misused by his enemies to persecute him.

This, he implied, was a betrayal of the entire liberation struggle. As part of his last-ditch strategy to avoid being held accountable for his actions – including corruption and state capture – Zuma focused heavily on the supposed betrayal of black South Africans in the negotiated settlement of the ’90s, which brought about an end to apartheid in 1994.

This, ironically, is a narrative which Zuma kept inside his head until the foreign, white spin doctors at Bell Pottinger in London began manufacturing the “white monopoly capital” and “radical economic transformation” memes for him and his allies, the Gupta family.

It is clear, from the letter, that Zuma is one of those old-style African rulers – those who have trashed the continent over the past 60 years – who believe in their own version of democracy.

Zuma doesn’t want a constitutional court to be the ultimate watchdog for society. Nor did many other African heads of state who looted and impoverished their countries.

For all his faults – and there were many – Thabo Mbeki represented a “new African” visionary type of leadership, in which building up a country was more important than building wealth for politicians.

When he was ousted as head of state and the ANC, he demonstrated that leadership by going quietly … the opposite of what Zuma is doing.

If South Africa does not dodge the bullet of Zuma, it will end up alongside other African basket cases.

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