Zuma failed our democratic state dismally

Maybe the greatest damage to the nation that President Jacob Zuma has done is the twin evil of the subversion of our legal system and its concomitant violation and ravaging of our nation’s soul.

As the law governs every aspect of our lives from cradle to death (even before birth and after death), it is the only thing that can make or break a nation’s soul. Given the close affinity between the observance and just application of the country’s laws on the one hand, and the nurturing of the nation’s soul on the other, any disregard and/or subversion of our laws without consequences rapes the soul of the nation.

The soul of the nation in a constitutional democracy is natured by a legal system that protects the weak against the strong while ensuring social justice and equality before the law. The systemic corrosion of the country’s legal system for corrupt purposes is a precursor to, and a precondition for, a degenerate democracy.

Accordingly, in a degenerate democracy citizens find every reason and opportunity to disregard the law. They feel justified to do so because those entrusted with the responsibility to ensure just application and observance of the law violate this responsibility, thus violating the soul of the nation.

Because the soul of any human being is the only thing closest to life itself and thus the only essence in living, its violation constitutes a cardinal sin whose punishment must certainly rank higher than any other crime.

As Plato observed in his important treatise, Laws, written in 360 B.C.E: “of all the things which a man has, next to the Gods, his soul is the most divine and most truly his own. Now in every man there are two parts: the better and superior, which rules, and the worse and inferior, which serves; and the ruling part of him is always to be preferred to the subject”.

In a country where the government of the day exudes the worst forms of violation of our laws, it becomes difficult to expect or demand that citizens hold themselves to higher standards of moral and ethical behaviour. Any such demands or expectations will be unjustified if the government fails to construct the best order or organisation of human society based on equal application and protection of the law.

To this end, our situation is compounded by President Zuma’s blatant refusal to accept responsibility for his numerous misdemeanours and subject himself to the law. He has confirmed what Plato said in the same treatise quoted above: “When a man thinks that others are to be blamed, and not himself, for the errors which he has committed from time to time, and the many and great evils which befell him in consequence, and is always fancying himself to be exempt and innocent, he is under the idea that he is honouring his soul; whereas the very reverse is the fact, for he is really injuring her. And when, disregarding the word and approval of the legislator, he indulges in pleasure, then again he is far from honouring her; he only dishonours her”.

We must also emphasise here and accept that it is the responsibility of the state to detect, prosecute and punish offenders. Where the state wilfully fails to execute this responsibility in the face of glaring and mounting evidence – as the Gupta email leaks clearly show – its legitimacy will wither to oblivion. When this happens, the collective moral and ethical glue that binds the nation to its laws will start to unravel. This will be so because to a greater degree, law can be a public expression of morality and ethics.

Clearly for Zuma the law is an inconvenient irritation that must at best be ignored, and at worst be deliberately subverted. As head of state, whose constitutional obligation is to protect the republic, he has seemingly decided to abdicate this responsibility so that the Guptas succeed in their plunder of our country. Otherwise how does he explain his deafening silence on the Gupta email leaks?

The only plausible explanation is that he and his Gupta friends might have been caught red-handed committing a crime of unimaginable proportions. They have been probably caught stealing the whole country while raping and prostituting its soul.

What is more is that when Zuma puts himself above the law, morality and ethics- he thus takes the first and decisive step towards dictatorship. He plants the seeds of an impending political and social catastrophe. That the president has been found to have feet of clay but refuses to do what all citizens know and regard to be the right thing – which is to resign from high office of president – he thus places himself above and against the ethical rectitude of the citizens that elected him. Consequently, he becomes law unto himself.

It is therefore beyond any doubt to many of our citizens that Zuma has for all intents and purposes dishonoured his soul for tainted pleasures of life. He has allowed himself to, as Plato says in Laws, “grow into the likeness of bad men, and growing like them to fly from the conversation of the good, and be cut off from them, and cleave to and follow after the company of the bad”. In simple terms, he has chosen to associate and enmesh himself to potential criminals, instead of the honour to serve the SA people in the best possible way and within the law. He chose to subvert our laws and mortgaged our nation’s soul for immoral and unethical pleasures that bad people made available to him. For this, he deserves whatever heavy punishment the bad people around him will be subjected to.

Mzukisi Makatse is an attorney. He writes in his personal capacity.