President Jacob Zuma is more powerful in his cabinet now, after all his travails, and he is not going anywhere.
Let that sink in. I know that many have been saying that Zuma is a lame duck, that he is set to be ousted after the August 3 elections.
They have said influential ANC leaders are plotting his departure as soon as the party gets a pasting at the local elections.
Don’t believe any of it.
There is no doubt that there are many behind-the-scenes meetings discussing Zuma’s departure.
Indeed, sit at a bar in Sandton or Rosebank and you will be endlessly entertained with theories of when and how Zuma will go by those the president disdainfully refers to as the “clever people” in Gauteng.
They are a minority. They can talk the hind legs off a donkey, they can write opinion pieces in the press, but they have neither power nor agency. In the realpolitik of Zuma’s world, they are weak and insignificant. He is in charge.
If you want to understand the extent of Zuma’s hold on the ANC national executive committee and the cabinet, then look carefully through cabinet’s announcement last week that three of its ministers – finance‚ mineral resources and labour – would open a “constructive engagement” with the top four banks over the closing of the Gupta family’s companies’ bank accounts.
The anatomy of that “task team”, as Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe called it, is interesting.
It is loaded with two Zuma acolytes and one member – the finance minister – who still believes in the rule of law and supremacy of the constitution.
Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane, a man spectacularly unqualified and unsuitable for the office he occupies, continues to demonstrate that he was appointed by Zuma to be the Gupta “baas boy” in cabinet.
Remember this is the man who facilitated the Guptas’ acquisition of a farm in Vrede when he was a lowly mayor.
He also facilitated their landing a plane at the Waterkloof Air Force base in Pretoria for their wedding guests.
Within months of being appointed minister, he flew to Switzerland to facilitate their acquisition of the Optimum mine from Glencore.
The man seems to be a mergers and acquisitions unit for the Gupta family.
Now, on his white horse, he has been sent to force banks to provide banking for a dodgy family.
Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant has dodged parliament for years. You cannot criticise this minister because there is nothing to criticise. She simply does not do much. Any self-respecting president would have fired her.
But hey, now she has a job – saving the Gupta bacon.
It is clear that Zwane and Oliphant are Zuma deployees on the task team. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, poor chap, has to go and negotiate on behalf of people who offered his current job to Mcebisi Jonas while Nhlanhla Nene was still in office!
Has Zuma no shame? No sense of irony? I guess not.
This “intervention” passed through cabinet because Zuma controls it completely. He wants his benefactors, the people who pay for his wife’s pad, to secure their interests and he is using cabinet to do so. And no faction, no bloc, in the cabinet can stop him.
Indeed, the majority don’t want to stop him. They are at the trough with him.
The most compelling theory about what’s happening inside the ANC was posited by the Daily Maverick’s Ranjeni Munusamy last week. Those who want Zuma to go exist in numbers, of course, but whenever they are about to play their hand they are faced by a Zuma who says: “Get rid of me and I will lead a breakaway from this ANC”.
Given that he commands support in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Free State and North West, those who oppose him realise that such a move would destroy the party.
It would not be a splinter in the mode of what happened with COPE in 2009 or the EFF in 2014. The ANC would cleave in two.
Zuma does not care what happens to the ANC. He cares deeply, however, about what happens to him personally. He doesn’t want to go to jail. He wants to secure a nest egg for his children. And so, when his opponents ask him to step down, he tells them that if they get rid of him he will walk away with half the ANC.
He is a master of the manipulation of power and weakness.
He knows that his opponents care deeply about a united ANC and that they do not want to break what has been put together carefully since 1912. So, they stare into a future where the ANC has splintered and they shake with fear. They back down.
That’s why Jacob Zuma is not going anywhere. That’s why he wins – every time. His opponents care. He doesn’t.
Repeat after me, Zuma is not going anywhere
Let that sink in. I know that many have been saying that Zuma is a lame duck, that he is set to be ousted after the August 3 elections.
They have said influential ANC leaders are plotting his departure as soon as the party gets a pasting at the local elections.
Don’t believe any of it.
There is no doubt that there are many behind-the-scenes meetings discussing Zuma’s departure.
Indeed, sit at a bar in Sandton or Rosebank and you will be endlessly entertained with theories of when and how Zuma will go by those the president disdainfully refers to as the “clever people” in Gauteng.
They are a minority. They can talk the hind legs off a donkey, they can write opinion pieces in the press, but they have neither power nor agency. In the realpolitik of Zuma’s world, they are weak and insignificant. He is in charge.
If you want to understand the extent of Zuma’s hold on the ANC national executive committee and the cabinet, then look carefully through cabinet’s announcement last week that three of its ministers – finance‚ mineral resources and labour – would open a “constructive engagement” with the top four banks over the closing of the Gupta family’s companies’ bank accounts.
The anatomy of that “task team”, as Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe called it, is interesting.
It is loaded with two Zuma acolytes and one member – the finance minister – who still believes in the rule of law and supremacy of the constitution.
Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane, a man spectacularly unqualified and unsuitable for the office he occupies, continues to demonstrate that he was appointed by Zuma to be the Gupta “baas boy” in cabinet.
Remember this is the man who facilitated the Guptas’ acquisition of a farm in Vrede when he was a lowly mayor.
He also facilitated their landing a plane at the Waterkloof Air Force base in Pretoria for their wedding guests.
Within months of being appointed minister, he flew to Switzerland to facilitate their acquisition of the Optimum mine from Glencore.
The man seems to be a mergers and acquisitions unit for the Gupta family.
Now, on his white horse, he has been sent to force banks to provide banking for a dodgy family.
Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant has dodged parliament for years. You cannot criticise this minister because there is nothing to criticise. She simply does not do much. Any self-respecting president would have fired her.
But hey, now she has a job – saving the Gupta bacon.
It is clear that Zwane and Oliphant are Zuma deployees on the task team. Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, poor chap, has to go and negotiate on behalf of people who offered his current job to Mcebisi Jonas while Nhlanhla Nene was still in office!
Has Zuma no shame? No sense of irony? I guess not.
This “intervention” passed through cabinet because Zuma controls it completely. He wants his benefactors, the people who pay for his wife’s pad, to secure their interests and he is using cabinet to do so. And no faction, no bloc, in the cabinet can stop him.
Indeed, the majority don’t want to stop him. They are at the trough with him.
The most compelling theory about what’s happening inside the ANC was posited by the Daily Maverick’s Ranjeni Munusamy last week. Those who want Zuma to go exist in numbers, of course, but whenever they are about to play their hand they are faced by a Zuma who says: “Get rid of me and I will lead a breakaway from this ANC”.
Given that he commands support in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Free State and North West, those who oppose him realise that such a move would destroy the party.
It would not be a splinter in the mode of what happened with COPE in 2009 or the EFF in 2014. The ANC would cleave in two.
Zuma does not care what happens to the ANC. He cares deeply, however, about what happens to him personally. He doesn’t want to go to jail. He wants to secure a nest egg for his children. And so, when his opponents ask him to step down, he tells them that if they get rid of him he will walk away with half the ANC.
He is a master of the manipulation of power and weakness.
He knows that his opponents care deeply about a united ANC and that they do not want to break what has been put together carefully since 1912. So, they stare into a future where the ANC has splintered and they shake with fear. They back down.
That’s why Jacob Zuma is not going anywhere. That’s why he wins – every time. His opponents care. He doesn’t.
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