When President ‘Angazi’ talked about Nkandla economics
PRESIDENT Zuma was at the podium in the People’s House, squirming, silent, unable to speak for the heckling, a Silvio Berlusconi before the legislature he had suborned to stay unaccountable.
It was the third time in one year that he had been shouted down in Parliament. Julius Malema’s small but vocal Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who had secured 25 seats in the 400-member house, were not making it easy.
As the 73-year-old leader watched helplessly, Julius Malema orchestrated turmoil, demanding Zuma pay back his “undue benefits” in state spending on his private residence at Nkandla.
Earlier in the president’s torture session, Zuma had struggled with other questions. With the economy in trouble, one of his ministers had nevertheless closed a mine owned by the mining giant Glencore over a labour dispute.
With his trademark laugh, Zuma said he could not be expected to comment on a matter about which he was ignorant since he had not been briefed.
Zuma gave the same answer when asked to comment on another minister’s public claim that judges attended meetings where they were told what judgments to give.
To a third question, about illicit financial flows involving Lonmin, the company which owns the Marikana mine where the shooting of 34 miners occurred, Zuma cheerfully countered that he could not be expected to answer since he was not briefed.
All three matters were prominent news in the daily press. Apparently the president does not see the newspapers or a clipping service while he travels on his luxury presidential jet?
Malema’s strategy for the afternoon humiliation of the president had hit all its marks for the televised session. Now the president had handed him this bonus.
“It is so embarrassing,” said the increasingly confident EFF leader, more in sorrow than in anger, “that your minister closes a mine, and you are uninformed. Your minister says judges are meeting in back rooms to take orders on their judgments, you are uninformed” – and the same with illicit cash flows. “How can a sitting president know so little about so much?”
None was a trivial or common occurrence. Few can remember a minister closing a mine, let alone in the midst of a collapse in global commodity prices when thousands of miners are being retrenched. Nor can one recall a minister’s unvarnished claim of such extreme judicial impropriety.
Even the company with questions about its financial movements was especially significant, since the Deputy President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was, until his recent political elevation, a director and major shareholder in the company.
Back on point, Malema concluded his afternoon’s contribution, it was clear he could get no satisfaction from the president over the corruption in the construction work at his house. “So we will see you in court.”
Game, set and match. Malema had won the news cycle. On social media platforms President Zuma began to be called “President Angazi” (President Don’t Know).
For the rest of the week an initiative by a party with 6 percent of the vote led by thirtysomethings would dominate the airwaves, print and social media. Meanwhile, Zuma focused on backroom political manoeuvring and won the parliamentary vote on an inquiry into the spending on his private home, saying he owed nothing. But the public was well past that, looking to the EFF’s next move.
The exchange between Malema and Zuma reflects the changes in 21 years. Dozens of young black presenters, reporters and members of the press confidently discuss US Reserve Bank chairwoman Janet Yellen’s dovish interest rate bias and China’s progress in converting an export-driven economy to domestic consumption.
Young South Africans are no longer isolated. The internet, social media, broadcasting, uncensored newspapers and freedom have brought South Africa into the world. To the born frees, whose worldliness the pre-1994 white presenters could not have matched, the First Citizen is a sitting duck.
A last memory of the debate was a plaintive Zuma saying the impression was given the country was in trouble. This was not true. “The country is fine.” The country was developing. But the country was moving past him, looking to a postZuma South Africa.
Since this book is in large part about South Africa’s rich history of ideas, a chapter on Jacob Zuma’s ideas need not detain the reader for long.
When the president requires input, it is not to the universities that he turns.
When first he was known to be the next president he could have called on almost anyone of importance in the world to assist him. Goodwill towards post-apartheid South Africa is inordinately widespread.
The world was the South African president’s oyster. On his first trip to the US as putative next president, he was still the ex-spy boss. He chose contacts from intelligence days to make his arrangements.
His style of governing is to balance forces, a good instinct. But, aside from personal benefit, that is all governing seems to be for him: balance left and right, leaving them to issue contradictory statements. Nobody is in charge. Balance between crooks and honest people. The president is sworn to guard the constitution against crooks, not to balance their interests.
In his seventh year as president, the old spy boss’s actions are wellknown as a result of dogged investigative reporting.
This can continue a while. Like the Italian electorate, which had the capacity to elect a Silvio Berlusconi as its national leader, South Africa re-elected Zuma.
Like Berlusconi, Zuma’s private life was so chaotic it had lost all privacy.
And, like Berlusconi, Zuma was willing to use the parliamentary system to keep himself out of court and prison.
Also like Berlusconi, his country’s economy did not fare well under his rule.
One minister who sat in the cabinet with Zuma explained to me the president’s approach to economic policy. Because he learnt to read properly only as an adult in prison on Robben Island, he has an understandable preference for briefings from people rather than heavy tomes. But he did have a very definite idea about what worked.
Zuma was impatient, said the former minister, with complex economic analysis.
But it was Zuma’s alternative that was revealing. Long before the country had ever heard of his homestead in Nkandla, Jacob Zuma said, “Give me Nkandla economics”.
What he meant, apparently, was build something you could see and feel. You build something, and that is a start. Then you add services, until you have something substantial. Zumanomics is Nkandlanomics. Perhaps that is why he asked plaintively in Parliament, “What have I done wrong?”
God, Spies and Lies is published by Ideas for Africa in association with Missing Ink.