Carl Niehaus, former ANC spokesperson at Pietermaritzburg High Court on May 17, 2021 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. It is reported that Zuma faces charges of racketeering, two counts of corruption and 12 counts of fraud - nine of which are for allegedly making false income tax returns. (Photo by Gallo Images/Darren Stewart)
Zuma supporters may be ridiculously mistaken in their argumentation, but they do have one thing right; the application of law and bloodlust is disproportionate.
Make no mistake though. Unlike what Dali may have you believe, the objective of applying the law equally requires application of the law, and not avoiding its application. In other words, the solution to the disproportionality is not to give uBaba a get out of jail free card. It is to put more jackasses in jail!
The debate as to whether this bust is politically inspired is neither here nor there.
If there’s one thing this saga has taught us is that even if it takes 20 years, our democracy is strong and robust. It can withstand an onslaught and be tested to the limit.
My takeaway from that is that it would be really difficult to lock somebody up with only political motivation. One will need much more than that before the gavel lands on guilty. So even if there was political motivation behind putting Zuma behind bars – a debate on its own – the existence of that wouldn’t exonerate him as some would have you believe.
The same people who celebrated the Constitutional Court’s ruling on legalising weed before the legislature has even developed the law happen to be condoning the Constitutional Court for putting Zuma away before an inconsequential High Court matter.
It’s easy to have such inconsistent arguments when you’re arguing on the outcomes you want instead of the law.
But the argument is rather compelling and does, at least to the twitter laymen, seem like inequality in the law. It’s a red herring though, because the problem isn’t the law itself, it’s the system to get people in front of the law, and that’s where we need to focus.
Unfortunately, when you have a complex legal system as we do, coupled with over 4 million illiterate adults in your population, there’s no doubt that one can win over a sizable portion of people with disingenuous arguments.
The obvious solution would be to improve South African education but who are we kidding? We boast that we spend the biggest portion of the budget on education but then the resulting return on that investment is nothing more than entry into the top 5 unemployment rates in the world!
South Africa just loooooooves throwing huge amounts of money at our problems with no actual, or at least effective, plans on how to actually fix them.
An example is the R500 billion and the world’s toughest lockdown, yet we still couldn’t stop a third wave from being more devastating than the last two. This despite many countries spending less, not butchering their economies, and avoiding a third wave altogether.
The longer we sit on that and do nothing, the longer we avert our attention from asking the tough unpopular questions, and the longer team Zuma will be building up superficial ammunition against a justified prosecution.
Superficial ammunition is effective though. It may not strike a blow but could be enough to disincentivise a winnable fight.
The fight against uBaba is totally winnable. The reason it hasn’t been won yet is because it hasn’t kicked off. The reason it hasn’t kicked off is because he has supporters who wield this superficial ammunition to great effect.
It puts the breaks on the fight because of political tensions. Those tensions need not exist though.
Put that same energy, disdain and upset into finding out more about where that R500 billion went and together we can give all corrupt camps an equal opportunity ass kicking.
It probably won’t even be that difficult. Simply have luxury car dealers release their financials for June/July 2020?
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