XPost: soc.culture.south-africa, za.politics, za.misc
XPost: soc.history, soc.culture.indian
From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net

This article is the best summary of the history of government in South
Africa for the last nine years I have yet seen.

If you are outside South Africa, this may be all you need to know.

If you are South African, you need to know at least this.


In the Ruins of the House of Zupta

Susan Booysen 15 Feb 2018 07:39 (South Africa)

The largely unspoken trump card in the turn against Zuma was the
inconvenient but incontrovertible truth that Zuma’s ongoing presence
in leading government would in all probability lose the 2019 elections
for the ANC.

The House of Zupta is in ruins. Two of its last vestiges tumbled this
week. As Jacob Zuma was forced into resignation from the Presidency of
South Africa, the Brothers Gupta and a host of associates were
arrested, charged and brought before court.

The events brought to an end an unprecedented and embarrassing era in
South African politics. Even as questions remain about exactly how
pristine the new holders of political power in South Africa are, it is
a certainty: the House of Zupta has fallen.

Nothing about the cracking and crumbling of the Zupta edifice was
easy, fast or guaranteed.

It was to have been the heart of a kingdom that would prosper off the
riches of the South African state. The Zuptas inhabited this house
with abandon. Jacob Z constructed an elaborate safety net to cover the network’s operations of siphoning state funds into private coffers,
linked directly and indirectly to the joint Gupta-Zuma political
dynasty. Zuma ensured that core investigative and prosecutorial
institutions were infiltrated – their task was to forestall and stall complaints, investigations and charges. To back this up, endless
streams of public funds provided access to expert legal
representation.

Zuma’s construction of his bastion of hijacked state funds started
early, taking shape in his first term in office (2009-2014),
flourished and then spun out of control from as early as 2012. By the
time of the ANC’s 2012 Mangaung conference the Guptas knew the result
of the ANC elections well in advance of any formalisation. The Guptas
aided Zuma in every aspect of the project, including in guiding the
appointment of puppet Cabinet ministers who would service the grand
Zupta project of pilfering and banal enrichment in exchange for
sidekicks’ small-fry benefits such as trips to Dubai.

The Zupta alliance, extending deep into the South African state, had
become brazen. All their actions signalled that they knew they had the
power. It was a parallel system of government.

They controlled the king of the castle, who, in the arguments of
Ronnie Kasrils, was an expert seeking out potential benefactors to
help him realise the life that he thought he was entitled to. In the
Guptas, Zuma had found the perfect match. Of course, the Zuma clan’s
pursuit of riches was not limited to tapping into the Gupta networks exclusively. There were (or are) other families too, besides multiple underworld links that have surfaced.

This kingdom of political and financial extravagance was supposed to
have lasted forever; Zuma’s ANC – a faction that was cultivated into political dominance – was supposed to have endured until “Jesus comes again”.

The cracks widened, most tangibly in December 2015 when Zuma plunged
into the replacement of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene with Des van
Rooyen, all on the Guptas’ instigation if not prescription. The
landscape started changing and a story unfolded of growing public
scrutiny, investigative journalists’ relentless pursuit of leads and
then, the #GuptaLeaks. The tide was changing, even if for the time
being the activities of pilferage and looting with the Zuptas as
beneficiaries continued.

Further turning points that helped destroy the House of Zupta included
Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report and the Constitutional
Court’s “breach of the Constitution” ruling on Zuma and his Nkandla bastion. Opposition parties’ and civic organisations’ use of the
courts of South Africa to force accountability, which the factional
Zumaist ANC could not muster, helped to consolidate the gains. Next,
structures in the ANC started dissenting, foremost among them the
veterans. Gradually, ANC members and branches also started rebelling
across provinces beyond the Premier League and KwaZulu-Natal.

A Cyril Ramaphosa team had started working on building an intra-ANC
defeat-Zuma alliance soon after Ramaphosa’s serendipitous ascension
into the ANC deputy presidency in 2012. Kgalema Motlanthe stood on the
verge of defeat in the ANC presidential race and refused to enter as a compromise deputy presidential candidate on the Zuma slate. As
contentious and complicit in many respects as this Ramaphosa move was
(and will remain for the foreseeable future), he accepted the ANC and
South African deputy presidencies. This was the beachhead to defeat
the Zupta regime.

The House of Zupta had become entrenched so firmly that defeat
appeared close to impossible. Zuma had envisaged it as the empire on
which the sun would never set. The Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma candidacy
for the ANC’s Nasrec 2017 elections was supposed to be the warrantee
of never-ending control. To win power, the Ramaphosa alliance would
need the support of many of the Zumaists. Compromise with the
compromised became one of the rules of the game to collapse pillars of Zuptaism.

Foundations started collapsing under the “weight” of the slim 179-vote majority in the Nasrec presidential elections. This was the turning
point that might so easily not have materialised. There was the
over-confidence that made a substantive batch of North West and Free
State branches and regions overstep the boundaries of legitimate
conference preparations. Court rulings disqualified these delegates
from Nasrec participation. A 3,000-strong NDZ caucus meeting as Nasrec
took off made the NDZ disciples believe that they could sacrifice the
contested branches; these were “a drop in the ocean”, they argued.
Even more, victory was certain, they prophesised. The DD
Mabuza-Mpumalanga “unity” ticket might have helped, to some unknown
extent, but might not even have been definitive.

Despite this milestone of Ramaphosa’s Nasrec victory, the House of
Zupta was standing. The Zumaists reckoned they could still safeguard
power until 2019. It would, they thought, give enough time to secure
the family silver of nuclear deals, and milking the economy generally
through the last of the acolytes in state-owned entities and
sycophantic deployees in state departments.

Yet, power shifted phenomenally in the six weeks from early January to mid-February 2018, reaching a crescendo in the 10 days from 4 to 14
February.

One after the other the ANC’s internal structures first shifted
tentatively in favour of Ramaphosa. Next the shifts became definitive.
Zumaist support in the National Executive Committee (NEC) grew
markedly as he emerged as the successor-in-rapid-making. The Ramaphosa
side gained a sufficient majority in the National Working Committee
(NWC) to make it clear that there was no going back to the Zuma order.
The ANC parliamentary caucus (generally taking its lead from the NEC)
was confirmed as up to 80% pro-Ramaphosa. That meant that they would
be able and prepared to carry out a motion of no confidence. The days
of August 2017 with its narrow parliamentary defeat of an anti-Zuma
motion were over.

A final Zupta pillar was pulled down under the threat from opposition
parties plus the ANC to bring on such a motion of no confidence in
Parliament, or impeachment proceedings once those rules would be in
place by mid-March (as per the Constitutional Court instruction of
late 2017). Zuma was being smoked out of his lair. He had nowhere to
go ... Neither had his Gupta associates.

Under the new political umbrella of anti-corruption action, the
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and Hawks found their previously immobilised feet. Action started. Ramaphosa had gained traction
through his Davos World Economic Forum visit. He returned later in
January with the message that the precondition for investment was
decisive action on corruption. The Guptas, with their Vrede-Estina
dairy as laundering veil for personal gain and glorious wedding
parties, were trapped.

The rug of power was pulled further from underneath Zuma’s feat when
the half-new ANC postponed the State of the Nation address, so that
Zuma would not be the messenger of ANC government plans in a
pre-election year. The eclipse of Zuma’s state power was extended when
he was deprived of power to conduct his own Cabinet meetings. He
agreed to effective co-governance with Ramaphosa; his every move was
watched.

The largely unspoken trump card in the turn against Zuma was the
inconvenient but incontrovertible truth (proven in multiple, credible
public opinion polls) that Zuma’s ongoing presence in leading
government would in all probability lose the 2019 elections for the
ANC. Even Zuma acknowledged this indirectly in his yelps of
victimhood. The circle closed when Zuma was forced into resignation on
14 February, and Ramaphosa took the oath of presidential office a mere
16 hours later.

Among the ruins of the House of Zupta stands a lonely former
president, crying: What are the reasons? What have I done? DM

Susan Booysen

https://t.co/bxU3nXzTcK


--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com

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