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Seeking healing from foreign hands shows he did not invest enough in SA health, writes Lukas Fula
Former president Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is ill and can’t appear before the state capture commission which he was instructed to set up by the courts after alleging that the Public Protector’s recommendations were not binding; that’s the word from The Mud House, also known as Nkandla.
Read: Zuma still too sick to appear before Zondo commission
And last week, he also said he is too ill to appear before a criminal court that is supposed to determine whether he is innocent or guilty.
The Mud House says Zuma’s problems started when his estranged wife, Nompumelelo Ntuli, allegedly poisoned him, a charge which failed to stick and resulted in a withdrawal of charges by the National Prosecuting Authority.
And, with this rumour of Zuma’s Cuban hospitalisation being nothing but a false flag operation, South Africans are left wondering if he, eyeing a judicial cul-de-sac, sees himself as some African version of the late Bolivarian Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez who also taxied to Havana to die – for real in his case.
But Zuma’s case is different because Msholozi has been globe-trotting foreign hospitals since 2015, unaware it is an admission that he did not invest enough in the health sector and now has to seek healing in foreign hands.
There is something many people miss about Zuma’s façade of an illness that requires Cuban and Russian doctors to treat him.
Zuma is not running away from Deputy Judge President Raymond Zondo’s inquisition. He has nothing to fear there.
It’s a circus at which he can pull the same stunts his state capture buddies always do when they are subpoenaed; call people spies, throw toys out of their cots and play victim.
What Zuma is actually angling for is to get out of his corruption trial.
He does not want to be prosecuted on the grounds that he is too ill to stand trial and thus it becomes futile for the trial to even continue given that he won’t serve a single day in jail.
If he was put on the stand, his disciples would bring out their calculators and count monies “wasted” prosecuting a man who will not serve a single day in jail.
They will make it look like fruitless expenditure.
The idea will be for the court to drop the charges and Zuma will be healthy again and even attend cultural events and the 2021 January 8 statement.
For all you know, he might even campaign for the ANC come next year’s local elections.
Zuma invented the disease scapegoat when he advised his friend and former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, to fake an illness as a way of avoiding prison.
Zuma’s friend spent a total of 28 months in a prison hospital before he received medical parole and walked out of Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital straight to a golf course to putt a ball he had left a few metres from the hole when he was whisked off to prison.
Maybe it’s not correct to credit Zuma with inventing the illness stunt as people who wear the same shoe size as him have almost found their way into the Guinness World Records for developing an instant illness that is not a heart attack or a stroke.
Who can forget former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak who ruled Pharaoh’s people for 30 years and, after being toppled by his army, walked straight into a military hospital instead of a prison cell?
He attended court in a hospital bed.
The man who took over from him, Mohamed Morsi, was jailed without an illness but died in prison.
Mubarak is still here, still ill, still free, still pleading his innocence.
That’s the card Zuma is trying to play; run away from justice by faking an illness. He thinks he’s being clever; but we can see through his façade.
With the same lenses we see through the façade of fallen Hollywood producer and accused sex pest Harvey Weinstein.
Isn’t it funny that in just two years of an indictment Weinstein is so frail he needs two Simons of Arimathea to carry his cross as he walks into court.
Zuma is headed there as well. Watch this space.
Fula is a political satirist, farmer and the author of the book Uyenzeni uZuma – Debunking the Myth of Jacob Zuma’s Intelligence
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