If the jackals win the day

We come to the end of another dramatic week, and the beginning of yet another. We note the end of a second week’s absence from public life by President Jacob Zuma and the start of his scheduled two-week absence from South Africa. We also end a week in which power changed hands peacefully in key metropoles and begin what could be a cataclysmic fortnight.

As we enter this week, it becomes clear that we South Africans do not like doing things in reasonable measure. Dramas abound, with pivotal moments occurring every other month. We arrive at a crossroads way too often and experience Waterloos and Rubicons far too regularly.

This is no country for half-measures.

From anyone’s perspective, August was a beautiful month in the republic. A successful local government election that went off with little incident turned in an epochal result that sent shivers down the spine of the governing ANC.

As former Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) chairperson Pansy Tlakula pointed out, there was no jailing of opposition leaders or harassment of IEC bosses – as would happen in many countries – when the results did not favour the incumbent leadership.

What followed was more remarkable. Coalition talks saw us in unlikely mating games and reduced the ANC into a beggar wrapped in a flea-infested blanket.

The outcomes were even more remarkable as the Economic Freedom Fighters – declaring itself a “radical, leftist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement” that “draws inspiration from the broad Marxist-Leninist tradition and Fanonian schools of thought” – delivered governments run by the most avowedly free-market party in South African politics.

The sky did not come crashing down. ANC leaders took their seats on opposition benches maturely. With the exception of Ekurhuleni’s Mzwandile Masina, these leaders swallowed the bitter pill with a grimace but not a bark.

The August developments were a fantastic advertisement for the republic. They silenced critics who doubted the sustainability of our democracy, as well as those who warned that, like other post-independence scenarios, the party of liberation would show its true colours when its hold on power was threatened.

Then came the Hawks and shattered our serene moment.

When the state’s priority crimes unit summoned Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and former SA Revenue Service managers to receive warning statements, they brought us back to earth with a thud.

They reminded us that we still lived in a South Africa run by Zuma, along with an army of ruthless enforcers. This army, whose command lines stretch from party structures to the inner belly of the state, is there to ensure that the king is undisturbed as he goes about his nefarious ways. In its quest to enforce state capture on behalf of the king and his puppet masters, this army cares not for the bigger damage it causes.

New converts to the rule of law, and some who genuinely believe in it, say the argument that is applied to Zuma about having his day in court should be made in the case of Gordhan.

They say that Gordhan should subject himself to the investigative capacity and the courts of the land. It is only there, they insist, that he can prove his innocence and prove the villainous intentions of his persecutors. It is a persuasive argument that is difficult to contradict if you believe in the sanctity of the law.

But therein lies the conundrum for true believers in the rule of law who also want to prevent the republic and its people from being robbed blind by state capturers.

South Africans know that what lay behind the unceremonious sacking of former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December was the need for said capturers to get their grubby hands on Treasury and turn the nation’s coffers into a kitty.

The country knows that the greatest humiliation Zuma has suffered during his presidency was being forced to abandon a cosy setting in an Mpumalanga establishment a few days later to fire his pet, Des van Rooyen, and install Gordhan as finance minister.

It is common knowledge that Van Rooyen and the suspicious team of advisers he brought with him to Treasury did not get to accomplish the mission they had been tasked with – and this is a cause of unending bitterness of the part of Number One.

It is also common knowledge that despite his mealy-mouthed proclamations of “confidence in the finance minister” and the giggly joint photo – put in the public domain by his staff – Zuma’s blood boils at the thought that his people do not have the keys to the Treasury.

What is known to South Africans is that while Gordhan, together with economics cluster ministers and the business community, have worked night and day to rescue the economy from the Zuma-inflicted disaster of December, others have been working night and day to ensure that Gordhan is frustrated out of office so that he ceases to be an obstacle.

Finally, it is known that this week’s developments are not about bringing to justice a crime-prone finance minister, but rather about ensuring that crime-prone individuals get access to the assets and processes that Treasury controls.

In such circumstances, what does a nation do? Does it accept the bona fides of the morally challenged segment of our national leadership and state apparatus, trusting that what they are doing is for the good of the public? Or, does it decry Gordhan, who has done his level best to forestall the raid on Treasury, as a crybaby who should accept his treatment as a criminal suspect?

And, if the nation eggs Gordhan on to submit himself to the Hawks, does it take the logical next step and reject the notion of a criminal suspect being in charge of the nation’s purse? Does it then urge Gordhan to do the honourable thing and step aside, thus allowing the jackals in to roam wild? Is this something South Africa will be prepared to live with when the jackals have had their way?

These are the questions we should be grappling with as this titanic battle comes to a head.

This is not about Gordhan versus Zuma, as it has been characterised. It is about the integrity of the South African nation and the prevention of our slide into a failed state.

If the jackals circling Treasury win the day, we can begin humming that quaint Sarah Brightman-Andrea Bocelli duet, Time To Say Goodbye, as we are parted with our status as Africa’s economic powerhouse. This might sound melodramatic, but the consequences are that big.

Should the jackals win this battle, which will play out in a brutal way over the next few weeks, the current growth rate of just more than 0% will seem like glory days. What else will characterise this reign of the jackals, this lowly newspaperman will leave to the imagination of the rational South African.

Fortunately, the South African collective is awake to the machinations of the jackals. There is a fightback across sectors – crucially, within the governing party. The message of “this far and no further” was delivered eloquently and forcefully by ANC veteran Sipho Pityana at Makhenkesi Stofile’s funeral this week.

Looking the ANC elite in the face, he reminded them of their responsibility as the custodians of an organisation that has lived most of its 100 years in the pursuit of good. That they heard him is not in doubt. Whether they will do anything about it is very much in doubt. But if the leaders bury their heads in the sand, they too will find themselves victims of the fightback by South African society and the organisation that they purport to lead.

They will have to choose between South Africa and the jackals. And between the model society we showed we can be this August and the failed state we will become if the jackals win the day.

TALK TO US

How do you think the battle will play out? Where do you stand?

SMS us on 35697 using the keyword JACKAL. Please include your name and province. SMSes cost R1.50