Was Zuma a proxy or the actual trial

This was published in the Sunday Times on 04 August 2024 under the headline "Zuma's expulsion from the ANC a risky move."

The centrality of Jacob Zuma in the disintegration of the ANC is an area of significant impact that RSA thinkers still need to fully grasp. Zuma has been branded to have presided over the nine wasted years, and his term was one in which a convergence of corruption, state capture, and, lately, a counterrevolution happened. The censure of his influence represents a narrative the academic-media complex’s establishment has thus far managed to manufacture or consolidate consent about. The reach of this narrative carries the weight of his leadership in the ANC and South African politics. 

Zuma was, and arguably still is, a node of orientation, faction, or tendency within the ANC. He does not straightforwardly replace any legacy of struggle. Instead, he has added complexity to RSA's political power architecture. He has become the shapeshifter of politics within the ANC and South Africa, a figure whose influence is dynamic and unpredictable, constantly changing the political landscape. His ability to have engineered a radical economic transformation faction from within the ANC amid unprecedented accusations of state capture has made him a more complex, multifaceted politician with multiple roles. 

 

Given that the political discourse around strong personality leaders capable of attracting personal popularity or notoriety beyond the party within the ANC is changing rapidly at the moment, over the next few years, it will be instructive to follow how Zuma as an abstraction of this phenomenon and others is a proxy of what is being fought through him. Out of synch with the by-line 'in the ANC you do not self-promote, you wait to be raised', Zuma's rise to President has already defined him as an 'out of the norm leader'. This has made him construed as rogue, if not an enemy, in various national contexts.  The intensity of his rejection as a successor to Thabo Mbeki triggered one of the sustained consents about Zuma being a political trespasser. 

 

An unrepentant nationalist that he is, bred as a proud Zulu man like any Greek or English man, the ANC embraced him not as a unitary being but as a complex and dynamic political being shaped by the liberation movement's different eyes of its various needle types all had to go through, Zuma mastered the art and science of being ANC. Evidence of such mastery is ascending to its highest office with the odds against him. His understanding of the stubborn locality of loyalty to the heritages the ANC has established to sustain the liberation struggle system made him 'capture' the endearment of the 'power is in the branches' adherents in the ANC. His upbringing and socialisation resonated with many poor and rural South Africans, a social capital he made exponentially by submitting to the traditional authority of African Kings and the spiritual authority of Independent African Churches. 

 

His "both/and" approach instead of "either-or" when dealing with the tensions between the traditional African way of life, western civilisation and thought, and the Asian way of living built bridges and laid the basis to define RSA's national interests decisively. Notwithstanding the overwhelming allegations, which are morphing into a truth of a special type, and the discontent about him allowing the compromises that came with his relationship with the Guptas, Zuma stands as a singular but fascinating case study on how to disrupt a consensus of the Establishment. 

 

That the (entire) governing party establishment was unable to shift its understanding of how it operates and thus avoiding the 45% electoral outcome in KZN, which has had a significant contribution to the overall 40%, should be a lesson to manage many of his ilk growing in influence within the party. Already, sufficient technical information from public decisions shows the tendency to thicken again and potentially eye South Africa's consequential and at five-year intervals in the coming week, starting on 16th December 2027. On trial at the Zuma disciplinary hearing, it might have been his name but not his person. The hearing might have seen his issues as representing risks for the ANC because dealing with him is a convenient glue that connects it and different stakeholders, especially the grossly misunderstood 'market'. The only time you should believe in getting rid of strategic people who work on your reaction to their conduct as an opportunity to deepen your disrepute as an organisation is when they are at their weakest. 

 

The discontent within the ANC about certain of the decisions it has made and their visible implications on unemployment, employability of the unemployed, poverty, capability of the state to deal with poverty, inequality, and the commitment of the economic establishment to deal with inequality is what manufactures power and legitimacy to strategic members like Jacob Zuma, before expulsion. In a whirlpool of negative emotions, like losing the absolute majority to govern, when members are naturally more likely to blame the organisation and its reputation is likely to suffer, dealing with strategic members like Zuma, who might have multiplied, is risky.

 

The more the ANC displays perceived control over those seen to be confronting the reasons for the discontent, the more likely its consequence management solution is to produce new variants of anger and discontent because the organisation is seen as able to have prevented the crisis, including similar and worse cases. In the likelihood of Zuma appealing the hearing at an adjudication forum provided for by the Constitution of the country and thus subject to the transparency protocols obtained therein, the case might assume a new in-ANC reality show with costly implications for the reputation of the ANC. The opening affidavit, which will be public once lodged, will be enough to direct blame attribution and thus manage ANC membership attitudes, either way, about leadership after the court case. 

 

Having not been disappointed in how it responds to crises involving Jacob Zuma, the consistency of making him either emerge as a victim of an opaque political conspiracy or a modern-day Robin Hood renders whatever decision the ANC takes a proverbial 'kgomo ya mošate' (royal cow). There is, therefore, a need to analyse the implications of a guilty and expulsion verdict.

 

The brute truth is that the unabated and almost normalised growth of the 'members of members' phenomenon in the ANC has rendered it to have decentralised autonomous structures (branches, regions, or provinces) that have membership to the ANC as a shared link. On many occasions, these structures have demonstrated that they can have any mission, goals, rules or by-laws as long as they are managed not to be overtly repugnant to what is national. Equally, those at the organisation's helm, and due to their vulnerability to the 'power is with the branches', purchase proxies who, in many respects, operate like sub-national governance tokens that carry national conference voting privileges as and when required. 

 

The weight of a national leader's vote depends on the number of subnational governance tokens he has, and this is where financial resources have become a new hierarchy in the organisation. Was Zuma (the person) on trial, or is Zuma (the immediate past ANC President) a proxy to a bigger or amorphous trial whose end state might be a new reality of our politics: the end of the ANC? There is something indescribable about all decisions concerning Zuma that attracts support for him. The magic question is how society will deal with this unknown.  CUT!!