Pressure to impeach Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s much criticised president, reflects broader, rising public discontent with the ruling African National Congress’s senior leadership, a widening democratic deficit and steadily deteriorating economic conditions.
The Nkandla scandal, for which Zuma was belatedly forced to apologise last week, has been under investigation since 2012, when it was revealed that the cost of taxpayer-funded luxury improvements to the president’s rural home had risen nearly tenfold. The row has dragged on, poisoning public debate and undermining confidence in government.
An official inquiry in 2013 cleared Zuma of any wrongdoing, saying the work, which included a new swimming pool and cattle ranch pens, was needed for security reasons. But the following year Thuli Madonsela, South Africa’s public protector, accused Zuma of misuse of public money and unethical conduct.
Her report, waspishly entitled Secure in Comfort, noted that the estimated $23m cost was eight times what was spent on securing two private homes for former president Nelson Mandela, and more than 1,000 times what was spent on South Africa’s last apartheid-era president, FW de Klerk.
Zuma repeatedly claimed he had used his own money to pay for building work. And even as the row intensified, the national assembly, where the ANC controls more than 60% of the seats, continued to protect him, passing a resolution whose apparent purpose was to nullify Madonsela’s findings.
Zuma finally changed his tune last week after South Africa’s highest court ruled unanimously that he had violated the constitution. Baleka Mbete, the assembly speaker, who is overseeing the impeachment debate, is facing opposition demands that she, too, resign over her alleged efforts to cover Zuma’s tracks. Like Zuma, she has refused to go.
Zuma’s survival may be short lived. Expectations are growing that, like former president Thabo Mbeki, forced out prematurely in 2008, he will not last until the end of his second term in 2019. He is under fire from all sides, including the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), church leaders, Mandela era veterans, the media and online petitioners.
“Jacob Zuma is the cancer at the heart of South African politics. He is not capable of honourable conduct, and cannot continue to be president of our country,” the DA said before the impeachment debate.
“The president can no longer be considered a fit and proper person to remain the commander-in-chief of the South African nationaldefenceforce, nor can any of the parliamentary members who so stubbornly protected him be considered fit and proper persons to hold office as members of parliament,” said JG “Pikkie” Greeff, national secretary of South Africa’s national defence union.
More significant, perhaps, is the way Nkandla is being used by Zuma’s internal party rivals, political allies and breakaway factions to press for a more wide-ranging governance shake-up. Chief among the latter is party renegade Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters. Malema regularly abuses Zuma, but his main beef is with the ANC’s elitist old guard as a whole.
These critics point to persistent, deeprooted problems including the failure to care for the poorest in society, high-level corruption, a crumbling education system, influence-peddling by wealthy businessmen and chronic economic mismanagement.
South Africa’s economy is set to grow at its slowest pace this year since the 2009 recession and faces a possible credit rating downgrade. The rand has fallen in value amid a sharp decline in foreign investor confidence. Unemployment is at 34%, according to the World Bank. The Communist party, a long-time ANC ally, revealed the nervousness at the heart of South Africa’s ruling apparatus. It congratulated Zuma on his apology but wondered why the corrosive effect of the Nkandla scandal had not been neutralised earlier.
Much more was now needed, the SACP said. The court’s ruling amounted to a warning that “decisive action is now imperative, otherwise the continuing loss of moral authority, political paralysis and fragmentation of our movement will continue”.
A widespread sense of disappointment and disillusionment over the ANC’s perceived failure to significantly correct the economic injustices of the apartheid era is the biggest challenge facing those in the party’s top echelons currently clinging to Zuma’s sinking ship. They may yet decide to cast him off before all are dragged down. The next big test may be local elections, due by August, in key cities such as Pretoria and Johannesburg. Any change would be hard won.
“The veterans have sway within the ANC,” Somadoda Fikeni, a politics professor at the University of South Africa, told Bloomberg News. “It’s an indictment against the current leadership, which says despite any logical argument ‘we are going ahead defending our leader’.”
Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary general, said the party’s top leaders saw no reason to remove Zuma. And the president’s powers of patronage are considerable. More than 70% of the national executive committee’s members elected in 2012 were part of a bloc that backed him for the presidency. Many were directly appointed to government posts by him.
Max Sisulu, son of the ANC legend Walter Sisulu and a former national assembly speaker, said parliament’s failure to hold Zuma to account was painful and lessons should be learned. “Parliament must put its house in order and do the right thing,” he said. “It was quite clear from the start what was needed. If there is something wrong, you fix it. Our people were able to change the whole system of apartheid and establish democracy. This is fixable.”
