SLASH AND BURN
Former president Jacob Zuma showed this year that he will do anything to keep out of prison and keep a hold on power — even if that means SA has to go up in flames. The awful irony is that the looting of the fiscus during his presidency played no small role in creating the poverty so cynically exploited by his allies during the July unrest
No one individual has done more to delegitimise the state and subvert the rule of law in SA this past year than Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma.
During his nine years as president, Zuma’s treachery was hidden by the façade of officialdom. He was protected by a coterie of compromised ministers, submissive law enforcement agencies and an ANC whose moral compass had been jettisoned at the elective conference in Polokwane in 2007, when he assumed leadership of the party.
Yet it was only on leaving office that he shrugged off all pretence, and openly rode roughshod over the constitution and the law.
In the end, 2021 will be remembered as a year of legal reckoning for the former president: he was jailed for contempt of court, and failed — again — to have the court throw out arms-deal corruption charges against him. It was also a year in which the deadliest riots this side of apartheid played out across SA — ostensibly in Zuma’s name, and ably cheered on by his children.
Once the smoke cleared, more than 300 people lay dead, and the economy, already battered by Covid, was R50bn poorer.
The tinderbox
On July 15 2019, Zuma sat in the witness box at the commission of inquiry into state capture, chaired by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo.
It had been a long road to get there. Back in 2016, then public protector Thuli Madonsela recommended in her “State of Capture” report that a commission of inquiry be set up to probe allegations of corruption and state capture. Her report contained disturbing evidence about Zuma’s allies the Guptas, his son Duduzane Zuma, and key ministers and government officials.
At first, Zuma sought to have the report and its recommendations set aside on review (he failed).
But things only got worse for him: after his chosen successor, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, lost to Cyril Ramaphosa at the 2017 ANC elective conference at Nasrec, one of Ramaphosa’s first tasks as ANC president was to direct Zuma to set up the commission. Zuma, powerless without the cover of the ANC presidency, had to comply.
Still, it took over a year — after much wrangling with Zuma’s lawyers, and after more than 40 witnesses implicated him in wrongdoing — before Zuma finally agreed to appear before Zondo on July 15 2019.
The days that followed were marked by obfuscation, denial, bizarre legal arguments and conspiracy theories — not least of which, in Zuma’s telling, was a 30-year plot by local and foreign spies to keep him away from the presidency and to kill him. These faceless, nameless foes continued stalking him, he said, even after failing to prevent his ascent.
Yet Zuma’s channelling of his inner Ian Fleming wasn’t even the highlight of his short stint in the witness box.
When faced with questions about how he had outsourced his executive power to Atul Gupta, Zuma became unstuck: his usual jovial, cocky veneer slipped, he shifted in his seat, cleared his throat repeatedly and fidgeted; his lawyers, seeing this obvious discomfort, jumped up and down.
Four days later, Zuma summarily withdrew from the commission, his testimony incomplete. It was, his lawyers said, the fault of the commission’s evidence leaders.
What followed was a feverish court battle, which included Zondo approaching the Constitutional Court to compel Zuma to appear before him. The court supported that application in January this year, but it wasn’t kind on Zondo either, accusing the commission of treating the former president with kid gloves. Thus began Zuma’s road to prison.
Days after the ruling, Zuma announced he would not abide by the Constitutional Court order, which led the court to find him in contempt. It didn’t help Zuma’s case that he chose not to defend himself, even after then chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng gave him an additional opportunity to make his case.
Instead, Zuma did what he does best, whingeing about his plight and playing the victim. It kick-started the second prong of his legal strategy: propaganda.
The spark
Zuma’s whingeing hinged on three themes: he was a victim of bias by the courts; his treatment by the judiciary was reminiscent of the apartheid era; and he was to be detained without trial.
All of this was a lie.
First, Zuma chose not to participate in a court hearing against him, failing to submit affidavits in his own defence. His strategy was to avoid participating in the state capture commission at all costs. You can see why. The allegations — for example, that he was a beneficiary of an intelligence slush fund — made the arms-deal corruption charges look like a Sunday picnic.
By refusing to participate, he could keep open one avenue to discredit the commission: challenge Zondo’s final report, and argue that his side of the story wasn’t heard. It was, effectively, the groundwork for a longer-term legal strategy to fend off any possible charges.
What he didn’t count on was the damning judgment by the Constitutional Court — and a 15-month jail sentence for contempt.
So the Zuma propaganda machinery went to work again, whipping supporters into a frenzy, repeating his lie that this amounted to “detention without trial” and “judicial bias”.
Zuma’s children fanned the flames too — particularly his daughter Duduzile ZumaSambudla, who took to Twitter with a vengeance. Elsewhere, WhatsApp groups driven by the ANC’s “radical economic transformation” faction, business lobby groups, xenophobic truckers and rogue Umkhonto we Sizwe operators aligned to Zuma all got to work.
As Zuma, at the 11th hour, handed himself over to the Estcourt correctional services centre on July 8, the fuse had been lit by his supporters. No matter what laws he had broken, his allies weren’t going to stand for his imprisonment.
In truth, Zuma’s jailing “was a victory for the rule of law”, says Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution executive director Lawson Naidoo. “For a former head of state to be sentenced to a jail term for contempt of court is hugely significant.”
But Zuma would serve fewer than two months before being released on medical parole — by none other than his long-term ally, the former correctional services commissioner Arthur Fraser.
Still, says Naidoo, the fact that he was jailed at all is important.
The fire
By the morning of July 9, parts of KwaZuluNatal (KZN), and then Gauteng, were on fire.
Blockades and sporadic protests in support of Zuma had morphed into large-scale looting of malls; those directing events posted messages to WhatsApp groups.
All the while, Zuma-Sambudla continued to hold court in her taxpayer-sponsored castle at Nkandla, cheerleading from the side.
“Iziqhumane ZaKwaZulu … Silindile [Shooters out in KwaZulu, we are waiting],” read one post, along with a clip of a machine gun being fired in the air. She tweeted pictures of burning trucks, highways ablaze, each with the location and the words “We see you, Amandla!” and #FreeJacobZuma.
What may have started as a grievance linked to Zuma had mutated into rioting and looting, fuelled by SA’s eye-watering levels of unemployment and desperate poverty. Thousands descended on shopping malls, looting electronics, liquor, clothing — anything they could get their hands on.
More than 150 malls were attacked, along with 11 warehouses, eight factories and 161 liquor stores and factories. More than 300 people died, many trampled to death.
Months down the line, Citi economist
Gina Schoeman says it’s still difficult to quantify the exact loss to the economy. But without the July unrest, the third-quarter GDP figures released by Stats SA last week, which showed the economy contracting 1.5% quarter on quarter, would have looked rather different. “There are various industry estimates of the cost in [rand] terms, but it is obvious from economic growth the cost of the event,” she tells the FM.
More insidiously, given that such violence is no longer considered an abstract risk but a real possibility, there will also probably be longer-term costs.
“Has [the violence] increased SA’s risk premium, which ultimately increases the
cost of capital, which requires a higher rate of return on investment? For sure. It is part of the narrative when discussing uncertainty — politically, policy-wise and economically,” says Schoeman.
“[It’s] a very big threat, especially when unemployment and inequality continue to worsen. It is difficult to argue for social stability with those record-high metrics. It adds to the growing view that political and policy uncertainty remain extremely high.”
This is now reflected in one of the steepest yield curves in the world, as the government must compensate for its higher risk premium by paying more interest on its debt.
The ashes
After days of unrest, Ramaphosa deployed 25,000 soldiers to KZN and Gauteng. It was embarrassingly late in the game, and happened only after footage revealed a police force completely out of its depth. In some places the police were outmanned, but in others they nonchalantly sat on the sidelines, ignoring the unfolding mayhem.
If Zuma’s supporters acted, Ramaphosa’s administration dithered in response. As SA burnt, politicians did what they do best: very little, with a smattering of confusion.
The government couldn’t even agree on what to call the unrest. Ramaphosa characterised it as a “failed insurrection”, only to be contradicted days later by defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula. Then when state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo said she had provided the police with intelligence of possible riots weeks before they occurred,
police minister Bheki Cele flatly denied this.
As far as bad farce goes, it was Wag the Dog meets the Keystone Cops.
In the end, much of the violence was curbed by communities who took matters into their own hands.
In KZN, that took on a deadly and decidedly racist flavour, with the Indian community in Phoenix targeting members of the black community in a spate of vigilante killings. In Soweto, Tembisa and parts of Mpumalanga, communities began defending their malls, stopping looters from destroying the already meagre infrastructure in sprawling informal settlements.
But perhaps the most demoralising part of it all was the aftermath.
As the dust cleared, the government vowed that the masterminds would be brought to book; the police claimed 12 key instigators were under investigation.
To date there have been 18 arrests — and no indication whether any of these were of the alleged masterminds of the violence. The specifics of the “insurrection” have yet to be detailed in any court papers.
In hindsight, independent political analyst Ralph Mathekga believes Ramaphosa was entirely wrong to characterise it as an attempted insurrection. If it was, he asks, why has the administration taken so long to properly effect arrests?
The “trigger point”, Mathekga says, was the ANC itself. In reality, it wasn’t an insurrection; it was an “environment of mutiny” created by a party lacking the basic discipline to resolve internal differences amicably, he explains.
Once the spark was lit, those instigating the riots lost control
But what the violence showed so clearly is that the collapse of SA’s security cluster is far worse than anyone imagined. The recent SA Human Rights Commission hearings on the riots have simply underscored this terrifying truth.
During the hearings, government departments were at each other’s throats. So, too, were Cele and national police commissioner Khehla Sitole, trading blame for the absence of any real policing during the unrest. It was hard to disagree with Mapisa-Nqakula, who
concluded that the police didn’t have a handle on the situation.
This week, University of Pretoria professor Sandy Africa’s panel, charged with looking into the government and the security cluster’s response, is set to present its draft report on the July unrest to Ramaphosa.
It is believed to offer a comprehensive — and damning — account of events.
Ramaphosa has already shaken up his cabinet once since the unrest, ousting some ministers in the security cluster. Further shifts may be on the cards, given the Africa report, as well as Zondo’s final report, which is set to be handed to the president early next year.
As for Zuma? This week he released the first instalment of his biography, Jacob Zuma Speaks. It won’t surprise anyone to learn that it’s hardly the long-awaited tell-all about the skeletons in his comrades’ closets; rather, it’s a sanitised and glowing account of his presidency — a period Ramaphosa has called “nine wasted years”.
It may be Zuma firing up the propaganda machine early, ahead of Zondo’s final report, due on January 1. Once Ramaphosa gets that document, expect Zuma and his allies to again attack the judiciary.
The key question will be whether
Ramaphosa is ready to act on the findings — particularly in an ANC election year, with Zuma’s remaining allies in the party looking for any excuse to weaken the president.
Zuma may not be in jail any more, but he’s not off the hook. Apart from his pending corruption trial, the DA is challenging his release on medical parole. And Zuma-Sambudla faces possible criminal charges for inciting violence.
It means that, sadly, the country hasn’t seen the last of the 79-year-old Zuma — whose ability to weaken the fabric of its democracy has left any legacy he may have claimed in tatters..
period of stage 4 power cuts that Business Unity SA says would have cost SA more than R25bn. Earlier this year consulting company PwC estimated that load-shedding would be responsible for slashing SA’s already subpar GDP growth this year by half.
In one of the media briefings during the November nadir, it emerged that since SA hit an unprecedented level 6 load-shedding two years ago, not a single new megawatt was added to the grid. That appears unforgivable.
“It’s been frustrating for me that we haven’t made more progress, especially when it came to implementing our reliability maintenance programme,” says De Ruyter.
When he joined, De Ruyter promised he’d carry out this “reliability maintenance” in strict compliance with the guidelines of the original equipment manufacturers.
Only, this hasn’t been possible. In part, this is because Eskom just doesn’t have the cash available to plan for maintenance, buy spare parts, and sign contracts with providers. And the government’s rules on procurement have only made it harder.
“The procurement system does not lend itself to a maintenance programme. The average response time of the Treasury to requests for approvals is 77 days,” he said last month.
And the Public Finance Management Act, which obliges firms to embark on a laborious process of gathering three quotes, doesn’t help.
This suggests De Ruyter’s early ambitions have run into the cold reality that Eskom remains firmly stuck in bureaucratic treacle — unable to swiftly buy what it needs, or find the cash to deal with emergencies.
And yet, hard as it is to imagine, Eskom has actually made some institutional progress this year.
De Ruyter says the balance sheet is stronger than it’s been in a long time, and there’s been progress towards splitting the utility into three separate businesses: transmission, generation and distribution.
Equally, Eskom has made headway towards cleaning up a company that seemed, at one point, entirely poisoned from within.
A few weeks ago the Special Investigating Unit’s investigations officer Leonard
Lekgetho told parliament at least 102 Eskom officials had illegally done business with the utility, pocketing R5bn-plus in the process.
That’s before you consider how much money was wasted elsewhere: in one of the more bizarre revelations, it emerged this year that Eskom had been paying as much as R26 a roll of single-ply toilet paper (four times the cost) and R51 a black refuse bag (20 times the real cost.)
De Ruyter has attacked these sorts of costs with zeal — but this sparked a bitter fightback from within.
“We mustn’t underestimate the degree of internal resistance to some of our fixes,” De Ruyter says. “For example, I’ve badgered my guys to install a barcode system for controlling stock in our warehouses, but unless I drive this, it doesn’t happen, because there are vested interests that benefit from this lack of control.”
Of course, it needn’t always be vested interests pulling the handbrake on the cleanup; in many cases, it may be good old-fashprolonged ioned inertia, or ineptitude. State-run companies, after all, have never been an incubator of the can-do spirit.
Yet it is load-shedding that has given De Ruyter’s opponents enough tinder to demand his axing. Last week, the National Union of Mineworkers reiterated its call for De Ruyter and COO Jan Oberholzer to be axed for supposedly “destroying” Eskom.
More insidiously, this call has been amplified by a number of De Ruyter’s compromised predecessors, including Matshela
Koko and Brian Molefe.
Remarkably, the SABC and other media even interviewed Koko — who was memorably caught lying on Carte Blanche about Eskom’s prepayment to the Guptas, and whose stepdaughter scooped contracts from Eskom worth millions — as a so-called “analyst” on Eskom’s travails.
Says De Ruyter: “The spectacle of some of my predecessors being [used] by our national broadcaster as energy experts, when we are trying to fix the legacy of what they left behind, is a bit much.”
Perhaps if the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) had shown the slightest interest in bringing criminal charges against those implicated in looting the entity over the past decade, it would be different. But in yet another sterling example of institutional molasses, it hasn’t.
Eskom needs this reckoning, says De Ruyter. “We really need the NPA to start moving. There should be consequences in terms of any breaches of the law. And it should be swift and certain — not a decade after the fact.”
As it is, those who left Eskom under a cloud are now hard at work lobbying for De Ruyter to be axed. And were they to get their way, would anything improve at the utility? Not likely.
As Business Unity SA CEO Cas Coovadia argues, it doesn’t make sense “to create a governance and leadership problem in the midst of an operational problem”.
Better for De Ruyter to commit to a timetable of improvements, analysts say, and hold him accountable for delivering on it.
Those goals include halting load-shedding. “To end load-shedding definitively, we need to add 4GW-6GW of capacity to the grid,” he says. “This will give us the required headroom to carry out maintenance, and to start on the just energy transition.”
If the old cliché is that it’s darkest before the dawn — or, alternatively, at 4am during load-shedding — then it may just be that 2022 is the turning point. Because, thanks to Eskom, the country spent most of 2021 in a pretty dark place indeed.