Zuma’s move might just fix South Africa

If there was ever any significant political move that former president Jacob Zuma could make in retirement, his denouncing of the “ANC of Cyril Ramaphosa” and aligning with another political formation is it.

What is the real reason behind his sudden move? Zuma has no delusions that he can fix the ANC from outside as he claims, or that his newly formed and provocatively named uMkhonto weSizwe party will win next year’s general election, but he does have a yearning for power. Political power.

Why does he need political power? To use it as a bargaining tool in his legal battles. JZ, as they affectionately call him in the ANC he used to lead, has only one battle left to fight … and that is to stay out of jail.

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His legal woes are not going to suddenly disappear, so he needs to rattle those in power, if he has some power.

This power is the ability to take some votes away from them. His move in creating this new political party will definitely confuse the ANC voter who is loyal to the former president, more so in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal.

More than anything, it will hurt the ANC that he claims he will remain a member of until he dies. It needs to be pointed out that the reason the former president has a grudge against the “ANC of Ramaphosa” is because he feels he was abandoned by the organisation of his youth.

He and his supporters are bitter that this organisation has left him to his own devices and hung out to dry.

Their battle cry, Wenzen’ uZuma (what wrong has Zuma done?), was born out of the bitterness of feeling that he was targeted politically and legally in a way that no-one else was.

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According to his loyalists, there is nothing wrong that he has done that others haven’t done, yet he is the only one being persecuted for it, by his own comrades. And this is how he gets back at them – make them lose votes.

A man who has always chosen biblical analogies, such as insinuating that the ANC will stay in power until Jesus’ second coming, this move also has biblical vibes: a kind of Samson who is causing the whole temple to collapse, taking everyone with him.

The ANC, particularly in his home province, only showed him support very late in the day, when Siboniso Duma’s faction won the province ahead of the ANC’s elective congress in Nasrec.

So, he really has no qualms that he is taking them down and handing them over to the opposition on a platter. Unless, they go to him, hat in hand, begging him.

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And that’s the power he wants to have over them. And because Zuma is not one to shy away from brinkmanship, he will especially relish the fact that he has left his latest chess move for this late in the game.

Ramaphosa and the ANC will feel as though they have a gun to their heads. In a bizarre kind of way, the powerless former president has almost usurped the current president’s power, making him and his organisation feel politically vulnerable ahead of next year’s general election.

But the real beneficiaries here could turn out to be the country that the ANC has neglected over the years.

If Zuma holds on to his new party and costs the ANC votes, he may have inadvertently done the country a favour by giving the opposition a chance to have a go at fixing South Africa sooner.