2/14/2018 The disastrous legacy of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma - Jacob Zuma resigns

Jacob Zuma resigns

The disastrous legacy of South Africa’s President
Jacob Zuma
South Africa’s lost decade

Middle East and Africa Feb 14th 2018 | JOHANNESBURG

JACOB ZUMA was defiant until the end. For years he had ignored the clamour of
South Africans fed up with near-constant scandals and court rulings against him.
In his final days as president, Mr Zuma even scorned the appeals of members of his
party, the African National Congress (ANC), as they pleaded with him to resign. Yet
even as he hardened his heart against leaving, his comrades hardened theirs
against him, threatening to support an opposition-sponsored vote of no confidence
on February 15th.

Faced with the prospect of humiliation, Mr Zuma announced his resignation “with
immediate effect” in a live television broadcast late on the evening of February
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2/14/2018 The disastrous legacy of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma - Jacob Zuma resigns

14th. It was his second appearance on television that day. Upon learning that
morning of his own party’s decision to support the motion of no-confidence in his
government, which would also have seen the entire cabinet dissolved, Mr Zuma
gave a rambling television interview. With a hint of menace from a man who had
climbed the ranks of the ANC’s underground military wing to become its
spymaster, he warned: “We are being plunged into a crisis that I feel some of my
comrades will regret.” Wide-eyed, he also declared himself a victim. “What is it that
I’ve done?” he asked.

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The answer may come rather sooner than

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2/14/2018 The disastrous legacy of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma - Jacob Zuma resigns

“This Close” is an insightful portrayal of friendship

and deafness
into “state capture”. This will probe
PROSPERO allegations that the Gupta brothers, his
close friends and business associates of his
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son, improperly influenced cabinet
appointments and government tenders.

Just hours before the ANC said it would use parliament to remove Mr Zuma from
office, police investigators raided a cluster of mansions belonging to the Gupta
family. Five people were arrested in relation to allegations of corruption involving a
government-funded dairy farm.
Mr Zuma’s ouster is a triumph for Cyril Ramaphosa, who was elected leader of the
ANC at a party conference in December. But Mr Ramaphosa will have a mighty mess
to clean up.

By most measures the country is worse off now than a decade ago, when Mr Zuma
became leader of the ANC before being elected as president in 2009. Economic
growth has slowed to a crawl, and briefly dipped into recession last year.
Unemployment stands at 36% when people who have simply abandoned the hunt
for jobs are taken into account. A greater portion of the country was poor in 2015
(the most recent survey) than four years earlier, and public debt has soared.
Inequality is yawning and public services are dismal. A league table by the OECD, a
club of mainly rich countries, ranked South Africa’s education system 75th out of
76. Its health system was recently shamed by the deaths of 143 mentally ill patients
who died of thirst and hunger after they were moved out of a well-run hospital and
into unregulated care homes.

Before Mr Ramaphosa can even begin to tackle many of the structural problems
that hobble growth, such as a poorly educated workforce and inflexible labour
markets, he will have to clean up a government that has been marred by corruption
at all levels. Clearing the rot will not be as simple as removing Mr Zuma.

Mr Ramaphosa will also have to take on powerful factions at the top of the ruling
party to fire incompetent cabinet ministers and battle a culture of graft that has
permeated right down to local councillors. He risks splintering the party should he
move too quickly.

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2/14/2018 The disastrous legacy of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma - Jacob Zuma resigns

But when Mr Ramaphosa steps into the presidency he will be able to tap a deep well
of goodwill that he earned in his previous careers, as a trade unionist and then as a
businessman. In less than two months since Mr Ramaphosa became head of the
party, South Africa’s currency rose to its strongest level against the dollar in almost
three years. The prospect of his presidency has already inspired some of the
optimism that greeted that of Nelson Mandela, who was elected president in 1994
and who wanted Mr Ramaphosa to be his successor. After Mr Ramaphosa lost out to
Thabo Mbeki, he told friends he would not be outfoxed again. His record as a
negotiator, leading the ANC side in talks to end apartheid, had already marked him
as patient and prudent, and he put both attributes to use in his long struggle to
supplant Mr Zuma and to, in the eyes of many South Africans, pick up Mandela’s
mantle.

As for Mr Zuma? Few will mourn the premature end of a presidency by a man
whose middle name, Gedleyihlekisa, translates from Zulu as “one who smiles while
causing you harm”. 

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