Former president Jacob Zuma has finally won an argument in court, for possibly the first time since his rape acquittal in 2006. He can stand as a candidate in the May 29 elections after the electoral court set aside a decision by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to bar him.
The IEC ruled that he was ineligible as a convicted criminal, having been sentenced to more than 12 months in jail for failing to appear before the Zondo state capture commission. However, the electoral court seems to have bought Zuma’s argument that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s remission of that sentence means he remains eligible to become an MP.
Zuma is now officially the grand bogeyman of our politics. When Ramaphosa had him dead to rights and could have finished him, he backed off — no doubt with an always keen eye for what might be best for himself politically. Now Zuma is going to have a shot at finishing Ramaphosa off, and it isn’t at all clear who might win. That’s how tight it is getting.
I’m glad Zuma won that case. You can’t run a democracy by lawyering your opponents away. He wants to run? Let him. He wants to start a new party? Let him. He can’t be head of state again, but he knows that. What he wants is to be able to tell the head of state what to do after May 29.
Specifically, what Zuma wants is for him and his MK party to do well enough that they become a natural coalition partner for the ANC. If they do, he will insist as a precondition only that Ramaphosa resigns.
The attempt to stop him running was stupid from the start. That’s how you create a problem, not make a problem go away. The Israelis made a similar error themselves after the Hamas atrocities inside Israel on October 7. Hamas knew they would overreact, and they have. The result will be chaos in the Gaza Strip for decades.
Had Zuma been prevented from running he would be able to victim-whine, which he is good at, until May 29. Now he faces an awful reality: will he really have to go back to being a mere MP? I can’t see that happening. This is a kept man not much in need of money. He’ll campaign colourfully and then find a poisoning story to justify declining to take up a seat and try to pull the strings from Nkandla, or wherever else he happens to be. Moscow, often.
A new poll out this week from the Social Research Foundation (SRF) says MK would win 13% of the national vote if an election were held now. That is double what people were assuming just a few months ago, and the SRF polling put MK ahead of the EFF, on a mere 11%. If the poll is accurate, that makes Zuma head of SA’s third-largest party after just a few months.
The ANC vote seems to be in free fall. Is it even campaigning yet? The party won just over 57.5% of the vote in 2019. Now SRF polling says it may sink to 37%. Anything that catastrophic and Ramaphosa would be out anyway. Say hello to president Paul Mashatile.
It is easy to scaremonger, but the polls are now so consistently bad for the ANC that even a catastrophe sceptic like me has to reckon they are telling a truth. Ramaphosa has well and truly blown it. He fancies himself a reformer and we will appreciate in the years to come his opening up of the electricity market (though that could easily be reversed). But his other reforms are too little and way too late.
At some stage he had to lead, but chose instead to protect himself politically before protecting the country. He launched fanciful policy initiatives on health and industrialisation and appointed a bloated cabinet of almost no intellectual or political merit whatsoever. He is extremely badly served by his close advisers.
Chaos
The fact that he is about to get his just deserts should be satisfying, but it isn’t. Zuma is chaos, and the people and governments like Russia that are backing him know that, and actively want it. Their targets are our democracy and our constitution.
For comfort you look in vain to the opposition. The EFF is extremist and the multiparty charter (MPC) spends too much time in-fighting. The SRF gives the DA 25%, Inkatha 5% and the FF+ and Action SA 2% each in an election held today.
So about 34% for the MPC versus 37% for the ANC. That sounds almost interesting until you give MK its 13% and the EFF its 11%. Even at 37%, assuming it triggers a Ramaphosa resignation as it should, it still leaves the MPC 20 percentage points adrift of parties of the “left”.
It also invites keeping a close record of polling results for a reckoning after the elections. These polls are stressful, and we need to know who we can rely on in future. I think 37% for the ANC is way too low, and 25% for the DA way too high, but the SRF poll is professionally done, fair and transparent, so we will have to wait and see.
May 29 is a Wednesday. By midday on Friday May 31 we will know the truth, and it will set us free for a few weeks. It will be a relief.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.