Zuma removal is delicate work

If a recent Mail & Guardian report is to be believed, powerful figures in the ANC are openly plotting to relieve President Jacob Zuma of the burden of running the country before this year is out. The president, on the other hand, according to a Sunday Times report, is allegedly (and, of course, by implication only) doing some plotting of his own. His loyal henchmen at the Hawks are reportedly waiting for “the political go-ahead” to arrest Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and others for their role in an allegedly (and this one’s a big allegedly) illegal spy unit set up while Gordhan was in charge of the SA Revenue Service (Sars).

All of this is, predictably, a deluge of anonymous-sources this and insiders-who-don’t-want-to-be-named that.

We’re told a team comprising ANC national executive committee leaders and national working committee top brass have been criss-crossing the country to speak to ANC branches to determine what a casual scroll through Twitter might have told them in half an hour: that Zuma is today an increasingly unpopular man. The ANC faithful seem to be feeling about him the way Liverpool’s fans may have felt about Luis Suarez in the days when the Uruguayan was chewing through the arm of any defender who got in his way. For the Reds, it was a case of still wanting to support their illustrious team, but not feeling altogether proud of what was going on with their star player.

Research and surveys suggest the ANC as a brand is today more popular than its leader. So this mystery ANC “Zexit” team is allegedly trying to find a way of ushering in a Zexit in a way that doesn’t “divide the party” too much. They don’t want any more UDMs, Copes or EFFs.

And Team Zexit has Zuma’s buy-in, we’re told. Hah. Really? We know Zuma told the ANC he was willing to step down after the Constitutional Court ruled against him, but I wonder if anyone believed him. I wonder if Team Zexit thinks Zuma will just go quietly. Good luck to them if they do, if their existence is more than just a rumour.

If, somehow, for argument’s sake, Zuma does go, there will of course be major division in the ANC. The yes-men and women he’s positioned in places of strategic influence throughout party and state probably have enough cognitive power between them to understand that without their Big Z, they have little further to link them to their fat paycheques. Most of them know only too well they are there for the purpose of blind loyalty alone. For Team Zexit to try to keep them happy in the absence of Zuma would mean that, although the big tumour would have been cut out, the cancer cells in the bloodstream will remain.

By the way, if, in being forced out, Zuma finally takes down all the comrades he’s carefully collected dirt on since the struggle days, what a bonus.

No, Team Zexit will have to zap all the Zuma zombies too, or else they may as well not even bother. The patient will remain critically ill and even greater malignant growths will form in the subsequent metastasis. The remaining pirates who boarded their ship in Polokwane will have to walk the plank with their captain or Zuma’s exit will be pointless.

To prevent exactly that, someone like Hawks boss Berning Ntlemeza is likely to give whatever teeth he still has in his head to keep Zuma exactly where he is. This is the man allegedly waiting most eagerly for the go-ahead to arrest Gordhan. Let’s assume for a moment that the Sunday Times has finally gotten at least one report about the so-called rogue unit at Sars correct – Gordhan’s arrest will not be the kind of order coming from a president who’s planning to retire to afternoons of leisure in his fire pool. It will be a powerful statement of political power by way of “untraceable action” of a man hellbent to prove he was right to appoint Des van Rooyen as the finance minister, and that Gordhan is just some sort of criminal. It will be Number 1 choosing the soothing of his ego over the wellbeing of a country, a reminder that he is not to be trifled with. The arrest of Gordhan would be more devastating to the economy and reputation of the country than the firing of Nhlanhla Nene ever came close to being. And then, with a giggle, he’s likely to tell us “not to overreact”.

In my mind, Zuma is standing with a box of matches telling a small audience, “And for my next trick…”, while behind him he’s paying no heed to a mountain of explosives. Berning could soon be living up to his name…

And as for the poor lot who may have volunteered for the hazardous task of getting rid of the wily Zuma, I hope they’re watching their flanks.

And I hope they’ve been paying their UIF every month.

– Cilliers is The Citizen’s online editor