South Africa: not civil war but sad decay

11 October 2006

Rian Malan, acclaimed author of My Traitor’s Heart, says that the rise of Jacob Zuma as a serious presidential contender is a terrible symbol of his country’s inexorable decline into disorder, political corruption and maladministration

Is this not bizarre? A politician accepts a discounted Mercedes from an arms contractor, lies about it, gets nailed �” and several of the ruling party’s most prominent leaders hail him as a hero, a staggering insult to their own criminal justice apparatus. In her eagerness to charm the rabble, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete went so far as to claim that Yengeni had never committed fraud, even though he pleaded guilty to same. The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), termed her behaviour ‘disgraceful’, but there was no retribution.

Why? Because a crackdown by Mbeki might cause figures like Mbete to defect to Zuma, who is not particularly punctilious about whom he accepts as allies. Don Mkhwanazi, for instance, got into hot water after hiring a ‘well-known crook’ to assist him in his duties as boss of the Central Energy Fund. Mkhwanazi claimed racists were defaming him, but fell silent when it emerged that his bent chum (who earned £300,000 a year) was channelling money into a bank account that paid Mkhwanazi’s mortgage in a posh Jo’burg suburb. Mkhwanazi resigned in disgrace. Today he is a trustee of Zuma’s unofficial election campaign.

My pal Steve says one shouldn’t take such things too seriously, noting that respectable people have also cast their lot with Zuma. Maybe so, but Zuma’s core supporters are scary. The other day they put on a spectacular display at a conclave of Cosatu, South Africa’s mighty Congress of Trade Unions. Whenever an incumbent cabinet member appeared, delegates rose to their feet, waving red flags and chanting, ‘Tell us, what has Zuma done?’ One minister was jeered off the podium. The deputy state president was ‘humiliated and degraded’ by hecklers, who went on to sing, ‘It is better for us to take over this country, we will go with the Communists.’ President Mbeki wisely kept his distance, but they had a song for him too: ‘We will kill this big ugly dog for Zuma.’