Читать книгу The President's Keepers - Jacques Pauw - Страница 9

I have only seen Jacob Zuma twice, the last time towards the end of 2007 behind the soaring walls and electric fence of his home in the leafy suburb of Forest Hill in Johannesburg. He was under siege: he had been fired as deputy president and his rancorous rival, Thabo Mbeki, was going for his jugular.

The president's hit men, the elite crime-busting Scorpions, had reintroduced corruption, fraud and money-laundering charges against Zuma, which could have sent him to prison for a long time. But Zuma showed no hints of his legal predicaments. After security guards had searched our bags, they ushered us into a study, where a minute or two later Zuma sauntered in. A smile covered the width of his face.

Zuma's residence was hardly the sanctuary it should have been. It was exposed to the outside world by two dramatic legal events that marked the run-up to his appointment as South Africa's fourth democratically elected president in May 2009.

We sat in a study at a polished wooden desk, the very same room the Scorpions had searched for computer hard drives and documents to support their criminal case that Zuma had taken bribes from his financial adviser, Schabir Shaik. Prosecutors eventually formulated 783 charges of corruption, fraud and racketeering against Zuma.

A year earlier, the world was taken on a sordid journey through Zuma's guest bedroom where he had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman. She was the daughter of a struggle comrade who was imprisoned with Zuma on Robben Island. She called him “Uncle” and regarded him as a substitute father after her own had died in a car accident. She became known to the world as Khwezi and claimed that Zuma had forced himself on her; his defence was that the act was consensual. He testified that Khwezi was wearing a “kanga” – a brightly coloured, wrap-around cloth – which he interpreted as an invitation for sex. He afterwards took a shower to protect himself against the Aids virus. In a country ravaged by Aids, he said: “A shower would minimise the risk of contracting the disease.” Zuma was found not guilty, but the trial exposed his archaic and almost feudal perception of women, sex and HIV/Aids.

Quoting from Rudyard Kipling during his judgment, Judge Willem van der Merwe said: “And if you can control your body and your sexual urges, then you are a man, my son.”

Although Zuma afterwards apologised for his defilement of a comrade's offspring, a few years later he procreated with another friend's daughter. The father was soccer boss Irvin Khoza and his 39-year-old daughter was carrying Zuma's 20th (known) child. Zuma had to pay customary damages to the Khoza family, known as “inhlawulo” in Zulu.

The rape trial should have spelled the end of Zuma's political ambitions but instead set in motion a political tsunami as comrades and cadres flooded to the Johannesburg High Court with posters that said “Burn the bitch” and “100% Zulu boy”. They believed that the rape accusation was part of a Thabo Mbeki-driven political conspiracy to hammer the last nail in his deputy's political coffin. Khwezi, they argued, got what she deserved. Khwezi and her mother were subsequently hounded out of the country after Zuma supporters burned down their home. She died in October 2016 and was named as Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo.

When I saw Zuma, it was a few months before he was elected as ANC president. I was a researcher for a foreign journalist and had managed to arrange an interview with him. Dressed in a loose, casual shirt, he flaunted a perfect row of white teeth and said: “Maybe you are talking to the wrong man, because I am just a cadre of the ANC. And I can tell you now that I have no desire to be the president.”

Zuma laughed as he said it – not the he-he-he-he-he that later became his trademark in Parliament when he was in trouble or under siege, but a deep and genuine expression of merriment. It was difficult not to like him. His charm and geniality reminded me why he was often referred to as the “people's politician”.

There are two public personae of Jacob Zuma. Think of him standing in Parliament delivering the State of the Nation address or answering questions from the opposition. Or even more daunting: think of him addressing the United Nations in New York. Gauche, bumbling, unworldly, clueless, fibbing, awkward. Long-grump-pauses-grump-between-grump-sentences. Zuma is one of the most lampooned and jeered heads of state in the world and can easily be brushed aside as an uneducated peasant – yet he is in fact a brilliant strategist.

But then there is the other Jacob Zuma, entering a township in a cloud of dust and flashing blue lights. There is no more effective politician than Zuma when he knocks on doors, pats babies and holds the hands of the elderly. He listens, he chuckles, he empathises, he connects, he brings hope, he says whatever people want to hear. He is living proof of how the ANC, for 75 years, built a party and a struggle movement from door to door and from comrade to comrade before winning the 1994 election.

* * *

The first time I saw Zuma, he was still banned and therefore regarded by the apartheid government as a terrorist and a communist – albeit for only one more day. It was 1 February 1990 and I was in Harare, Zimbabwe, for the first press conference of apartheid killer Dirk Coetzee.

Zuma was Coetzee's ANC keeper and protector. The story of Coetzee and how he got to the ANC is the subject of books but, in short, I was at the time a journalist at the Afrikaans anti-apartheid newspaper Vrye Weekblad (Free Weekly), which maverick editor Max du Preez, I and four other journalists had started.

Coetzee was once a golden boy in the police and a member of the feared Security Branch. In 1979, he set up a secret police unit on a farm called Vlakplaas, just west of Pretoria. The farm was manned by a few security policemen and so-called askaris – captured ANC and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) guerrillas who were “turned” into killer cops. They were tortured until they agreed to work for the police. Once at Vlakplaas, they were dispatched to hunt down and assassinate their former comrades and ANC and PAC members.

After less than two years as commander of Vlakplaas, Coetzee had a falling-out with the generals and was transferred to the dog unit as a dog handler. He lamented at the time: “I don't even have a fucking dog!” Embittered and disillusioned, Coetzee embarked on a campaign to get back at the generals who had engineered his demise. He spoke to top Progressive Federal Party (PFP) politicians (the political party to the left of the ruling National Party) and a newspaper editor. He told them of his murderous missions; of how his unit had poisoned captured “terrorists” who refused to become askaris and then burned their bodies on pyres of wood and tyres – while gorging themselves on brandy and Coke at their own braaivleis-vuur (barbecue) a few metres away. He explained how they slit the throat of a well-known lawyer, Griffiths Mxenge, in 1981 because they suspected that the ANC was channelling money through his bank account. He mentioned the names of three generals and several brigadiers who ordered the assassinations. He also exposed a colonel who succeeded him at Vlakplaas: Eugene de Kock. De Kock acquired the nickname of Prime Evil and was eventually sentenced to several life sentences for a host of murders and other serious crimes.

Nobody believed Coetzee (or wanted to believe him) and he eventually found his way to me as a young reporter at an Afrikaans Sunday newspaper. The paper supported the government and would never have published the story. I kept in contact with Coetzee, and when we founded Vrye Weekblad, it was time to expose the existence of the police death squads.

Coetzee demanded that we arrange a haven overseas and look after his family back home. We didn't have money and decided there was only one option: Coetzee must join the ANC in exile and the organisation must undertake to protect him. In return, they could debrief him and use him for whatever propaganda purposes they chose.

Max du Preez and I embarked on secret negotiations with the ANC's head of intelligence, Jacob Zuma. His name meant nothing to me. A go-between flew between Lusaka and Johannesburg to deliver messages. Eventually the top command of the ANC agreed to our proposal, and in early November 1989 Coetzee and I flew to Mauritius, where I conducted the interview with him and took down a statement.

When he left the island to fly to London, where Zuma was waiting for him, he asked me: “So what do I call him when I greet him?” I wasn't sure myself and said: “Comrade, I suppose.” From then on everyone was comrade.

Two weeks later, Vrye Weekblad pasted a big photograph of Coetzee on its front page with the words “I am Captain Dirk Johannes Coetzee. I was the commander of the SA Police death squad. I was in the heart of the whore.”

Zuma, sporting a beard, endearingly greeted me in Harare and said: “Aha, so this is the unguided missile! You gave us almost as much trouble as that comrade sitting over there,” he said, bursting out laughing and pointing to Coetzee.

After Coetzee was in ANC hands, Zuma tried to delay our publication of our article because the ANC wanted more time to debrief the killer cop. We ignored his request. Coetzee said afterwards that his interrogators wanted to know if he would be prepared to return to South Africa to conduct military operations for the ANC. That might be why Zuma wanted more time.

When I spoke to Coetzee in Harare, he predicted a big future for Zuma. “I'm telling you, he's going to be president one day. I've never seen anyone with such a sharp brain. He is a supreme strategist.”

It was at the time a bizarre prediction. Nelson Mandela was in prison and the ANC was banned. That was until the next day when President F.W. de Klerk announced the release of the ANC leader and the unbanning of the organisation. Zuma scurried back to Lusaka and the host of journalists who had waited for Coetzee's appearance rushed to the airport to fly back to Johannesburg.

Coetzee added: “And I will be the new commissioner of police.” I told him it was impossible.

“You are wrong,” he said. “Zuma has promised me the commissioner's post.” Coetzee frequently made lists of what his police top structure would look like. Most of his generals were white and from the old order. What about your new ANC comrades? I wanted to know. Where are they going? “To the army,” he replied. “They will run the army. Leave the police to me.”

I don't think Zuma ever made this promise. Coetzee's delusions of grandeur came to an end when he returned to South Africa in 1993. He got a lowly position at the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and was dumped in the archives. “How many fucking newspapers a day can you read?” he bitterly lamented. He was also convicted of the murder of Griffiths Mxenge although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) granted him amnesty and expunged his record.

Coetzee's hero worship of Zuma eventually turned into aversion and he blamed him for all his ills and misfortune. “Why do I have to stand in court but no other comrade is on trial for all the things they have done?”

After he retired from the NIA in the mid-2000s, he looked after security for an ANC-linked company, EduSolutions. He flew with the managing director to France in 2007 to attend the final of the rugby World Cup between the Springboks and England. Here he bumped into Zuma, who greeted him heartily.

Shortly before Coetzee's death in 2013 and on his sickbed, he said to me: “Can you believe that Zuma never even phoned to ask how I am? Not a word. Nothing. And to think I gave my life for them.”

By then Coetzee had reverted to being a rabid racist. “That man is a snake. He's like all of them. You can never, ever trust any of them. Be very careful.”

* * *

Little is known about Zuma's years in exile, but there are enough hints and evidence of a darker past that should have undermined his rise to the top. He doesn't talk about the 15 years he spent with the ANC in exile. He didn't even take his biographer, Jeremy Gordin, into his confidence. He is quoted as saying that details of the “operational events of those days” were the property of the ANC, not his to disclose.

It is often said that Zuma is proof that anyone, even from the humblest beginnings, can rise to the top. A son of a domestic worker mother and policeman father who died when he was a young boy, Zuma was chiselled from the land north of the Tugela River in KwaZulu-Natal. Called the land of hills, honey and cobras, it is an area tormented by poverty and stands in stark contrast to the rolling sugar estates and “white monopoly capital” on the other side of the Tugela.

Zuma had hardly any schooling because he had to support his mother by finding odd jobs. He taught himself to read and write. “I used to polish the veranda, you know, jobs like that,” he said in an interview. He followed his brother into the ANC in the late 1950s and attended informal liberation schools which the organisation had set up across the country. A few years later, the apartheid government banned the ANC and PAC following the Sharpeville massacre. The ANC adopted the armed struggle and formed an armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) – the Spear of the Nation.

Zuma and a group of more than forty MK recruits were arrested in 1963 when attempting to skip the country for military training. He was convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. He served his sentence on Robben Island alongside leaders like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki.

He was released without ever receiving a single visitor. He returned to Nkandla, got married and worked in ANC underground structures. In 1975, he evaded arrest and went into exile. He returned to South Africa only in 1990 after the unbanning of the ANC.

Details are scant for these 15 years, and maybe for good reason. Zuma's predilection for secrecy might come from the need to conceal his alleged complicity in the deaths of MK cadres Thami Zulu and Cyril Raymond, who were tortured and murdered while in Zuma's care.

Zuma lived for 12 years in Mozambique, where he commanded the training of recruits and plotted armed incursions into South Africa. He was appointed to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC in 1977 and served as its chief representative in Mozambique. In 1987 the ANC called him back to headquarters in Lusaka as head of intelligence and the commander – alongside Joe Nhlanhla – of the dreaded security department. It was known among cadres as the Mbokodo – isiXhosa for “the stone that crushes”.

Life in exile was perilous and lethal. Apartheid spies – known as impimpis – infiltrated the ANC and the movement was subverted by fear and insecurity. Mbokodo attempted to snuff them out, put them on trial and meted out punishment – often execution. Dissent in the ANC's training camps was equally harshly dealt with and brutally quashed.

Mbokodo's headquarters in Lusaka was known as “Green House” and the department held the same meaning for ANC cadres as the Cheka or KGB did to Russian dissidents in the old Soviet Union. It was occupied by a paranoid, violent and ruthless coterie of brutes.

In 1989, Thami Zulu or TZ (his real name was Mzwakhe Ngwenya) was ordered to report to Green House. TZ was a popular MK commander and head of the “Natal machinery”. He stepped up MK attacks in KwaZulu-Natal, but his campaign turned disastrous in 1988 when a Vlakplaas death squad ambushed and killed nine MK infiltrators. There must have been a police spy in ANC ranks who betrayed their operational plans to Vlakplaas.

Zulu's deputy, Cyril Raymond (or Ralph Mgcina), was also summoned to Lusaka. According to the evidence, both men were detained and tortured. Raymond died in detention, reportedly drowning in his own vomit after refusing to sign a confession admitting that he was a spy.

When Thami Zulu's parents heard he was detained, his father, Philemon Ngwenya, travelled to Lusaka to see him. He met Zuma, who denied that Thami was in detention. ANC security personnel eventually brought Thami to Ngwenya's hotel, where they spoke in the presence of guards. Thami said he was in good health and that nothing was wrong.

Although two months of interrogation failed to find any proof of Zulu's collusion with the enemy, Mbokodo recommended that he should be “disciplined for criminal neglect” for the 1988 deaths of his cadres. He spent 14 months on a mattress in a cell.

Ngwenya then received a call from his son, who said he was in a cell and being tortured. He returned to Lusaka, where he waited 18 days in vain to see either Zuma or Thami. He later testified before the TRC: “Mr Zuma would not see me. He spoke to me through this gentleman Sindisiwayo and told me that he would send my son to the hotel, which thing they never did. Why was I not allowed by Mr Zuma to see my son for 18 days? Even under the most cruel regime, apartheid regime, people were allowed visitors.”

ANC president Oliver Tambo eventually ordered Zulu's release. He was in an emaciated condition and died four days later in the house of a friend. Forensic examinations in Zambia and the UK concluded that he was probably poisoned with diazinon, an organic phosphorus pesticide.

Zulu's treatment was reminiscent of the most brutal travesties of justice that apartheid's death squads and security apparatus ever perpetrated. Jacob Zuma has never defended his role in Mbokodo and he failed to turn up for a TRC hearing that might have brought some answers. The commission nonetheless found that Mbokodo had been responsible for “gross violations of human rights . . . against suspected ‘enemy agents' and mutineers”. They found no evidence that Zulu had been a spy.

Philemon Ngwenya agonised with the TRC to find answers about his son's death. Yet the man who held the key to the puzzle couldn't bother to honour his appointment with the bereaved father. Neither did he make any effort to speak to or contact Ngwenya privately.

Why are the deaths of Zulu and Raymond and Zuma's leadership position in Mbokodo so important? The first reason is that Zuma illustrated that, if necessary, he is prepared to trample on the blood and bones of his own to achieve his goals. It is one thing to cuddle babies when the cameras zoom in. It is another to stand up and admit error and wrongdoing – something Zuma has never done. His life has been marked by denial upon denial upon denial.

But there is another reason why this incident is important. The skills and skulduggery Zuma learned as ANC intelligence chief have helped him to endure as president. As the head of intelligence, Zuma became skilled in the art of neutralising traitors and incapacitating opponents. He hasn't lost his touch.

He has promoted obscure, inexperienced and, in some cases, incompetent officials to powerful positions within the security, intelligence and justice portfolios. On merit alone, they would never have achieved such high office. The compromise is unspoken and undocumented: you look after me, and I will look after you.

* * *

When I met Jacob Zuma for the second time, he had been a “kept politician” for more than a decade. He was a financial leech and sycophant who extracted money and favours on a habitual basis from a host of benefactors who included not just his financial adviser and a host of business people, but even Nelson Mandela.

At the basis of his dark journey into patronage was Zuma's inability to handle his financial affairs. Polygamy and serial philandering come at a price, and both the taxpayer and his financial benefactors had to dig deep to sustain his lavish lifestyle and to sponsor the design, construction, expansion and upgrading of his Nkandla homestead.

All indications are that Zuma led a frugal lifestyle as a dedicated ANC cadre but that this changed soon after 1994 when he was appointed as a provincial minister in the KwaZulu-Natal government. When Zuma returned to the country he was – at least in KZN – the local boy made good and was expected to flaunt money and bestow influence to help his impoverished people. He was literally the umuntu omkhulu – the Big Man – and was expected to have a household and lifestyle befitting his status. Zuma had, however, returned from exile with nothing and was – to put it mildly – in a “debt trap”.

Badly in need of cash to sustain his image and ever-increasing household, Zuma turned to an old comrade from the struggle, Schabir Shaik, to give him a series of “interest-free loans”. In return, Zuma would use his influence to allegedly divert business to Shaik. Shaik was one of a band of brothers who had worked for the ANC underground during apartheid and were involved in the covert management of ANC funds. His brother Chippy became the director of arms procurement for the post-apartheid defence force.

Zuma's financial affairs were laid bare in a 2006 forensic report that the auditors KPMG prepared on the instruction of the Scorpions. Running to about five hundred pages, the report was based on tens of thousands of documents Scorpions investigators had seized from Shaik, Zuma and others. After the decision to withdraw charges of corruption against Zuma, the report was buried for several years until the Mail & Guardian dug it up.

The report exposed in the finest detail the financial recklessness of Zuma, which should have raised a host of red flags about his fitness for office. He opened bank accounts left, right and centre (at ABSA, Nedbank, Standard Bank and First National Bank), entered into hire purchase agreements, signed for loans and acquired overdrafts without having the means to repay them. According to the report, Zuma wrote 140 dud cheques with a collective value of R477,766.67 between 1996 and 2003.

Zuma merrily incurred large debts without bothering to consider where the money would come from. There were times when he couldn't even honour the first payment on a purchase because there was no money in the bank. Despite his terrible credit profile, banks bent over backwards to indulge Zuma because of his political clout. In many instances, Zuma didn't even respond to their queries about his overdrawn accounts.

Enter Shaik, Mandela and a host of benefactors. Shaik's payments to Zuma totalled more than R4 million over ten years and ended with his fraud conviction and imprisonment in June 2005. Zuma's accounts were at times so overdrawn that Shaik didn't dare to make deposits. Zuma would collect the money – as little as R700 at a time – in envelopes.

Zuma bought his Nkandla homestead in the early 2000s – when it was, according to a bank valuation, worth around R700,000 – and was granted a loan by First National Bank. His KZN business friend Vivian Reddy signed surety for the loan and serviced the payments for the first year. Zuma started construction on the first phase of the homestead shortly afterwards – without having any money to do so.

Benefactors showered Zuma with white envelopes while banks were at his feet. When the cash-starved politician approached ABSA in the late 1990s to open an account, his bad credit record with Standard Bank and Nedbank should have disqualified him. But the business centre manager wrote in a memorandum that Zuma was likely to be elected South Africa's deputy president soon and that his “bank balance was the last item on his mind, with more important matters regarding the country and the province to focus on”.

Within three months, Zuma's account was heavily overdrawn.

* * *

The decision by the post-1994 ANC government to re-equip the new South African National Defence Force led to the controversial multibillion-rand arms deal. Without facing any external threat, the government embarked on a mission to buy corvettes, submarines and fighter aircraft. Arms deals are notorious for bribing corrupt politicians. The South African arms deal was no different and was from the outset riddled with fraud, bribes and kickbacks to the ANC. The serial debtor Jacob Zuma was in the front of the line for his slice of the pie.

The Sunday Times and M&G revealed that in 2000 Zuma allegedly accepted a R500,000-a-year bribe from the French arms company Thales. Thales's South African subsidiary, Thint, had won a R2.6 billion contract in 1997 to fit four new navy frigates with its weapons systems. Thales also generously contributed to the ANC coffers. In April 2006, Thales wrote a cheque for €1 million (about R15 million at today's exchange rate) for the ANC to be paid from a Dubai bank account into an “ANC-aligned trust”.

Another Zuma benefactor was former president Nelson Mandela, who came to Zuma's rescue in June 2005 with a R1 million payment. This was made just nine days after President Mbeki had fired Zuma as his deputy and shortly after the NPA announced Zuma's prosecution. Zuma was at the time overdrawn by more than R400,000. The M&G reported that Mandela had identified Zuma early on as a financial “problem child” and had attempted to “discipline” him about his financial conduct.

KPMG said in their report that Zuma profited from a host of meal tickets other than those given by Shaik and Mandela. These payments amounted to at least another R3 million. According to the M&G, it appeared that Zuma might also have benefited from another arms deal company, Ferrostaal, which clinched the submarine contract.

In May 2005, Schabir Shaik was convicted of fraud and corruption in the Durban High Court. He alleged that he gave Zuma loans and didn't charge interest because it “offended his religious conviction”. Judge Hilary Squires would have none of it and sentenced Shaik to 15 years' imprisonment. The trial court found in the context of the corruption charges that the evidence established a “mutually beneficial symbiosis” between Shaik and Zuma.

Shaik tried his luck in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) but a full bench confirmed the sentence and said Shaik “subverted his friendship with Zuma into a relationship of patronage designed to achieve power and wealth”. Shaik used Zuma's name to intimidate people, and particularly potential business partners, into submitting to his will. The SCA concluded: “In our view, the sustained corrupt relationship over the years had the effect that Shaik could use one of the most powerful politicians in the country when it suited him.”

You don't have to be a lawyer to grasp the significance of the court's judgment: that there was a crooked, conniving and reciprocal relationship between Zuma and his benefactor, and they therefore shared equal guilt.

Books have been written and newspapers have been filled with revelations around Zuma's alleged corruption (the only reason why I use the word “alleged” is that he has not yet been convicted). The evidence is compelling and devastating, yet when asked in an interview whether he is crooked, Zuma said: “Me? Well, I don't know, I must go to a dictionary and learn what a crook is. I've never been a crook.”

* * *

They were once closer than brothers; once described as being like “tongue and saliva”. But when they tasted the lure of power, the gloves came off and the camaraderie broke apart. Much has been written about this period in South Africa, and scholars and authors agree that Thabo Mbeki had a low opinion of the “poorly educated peasant”. Mbeki's “imperial” and “removed” manner of governing was also light years away from Zuma's more “hands-on” and tribal approach to politics.

Mbeki was forced to tolerate Zuma, who was after all hand-picked by Mandela to be his successor's right-hand man. But once Mbeki was re-elected in 2004, he wanted to bury Zuma. Both leaders drew their daggers. Mbeki relied on his intelligence network, the Scorpions and the NPA to finish Zuma off.

Mbeki underestimated Zuma's access to an “alternative” intelligence network. To understand this, we must go back to the late 1980s to the exiled ANC's Operation Vula, in which Jacob Zuma played a leading role. Vula was arguably the most successful ANC intelligence operation ever, infiltrating extensive numbers of agents back into South Africa in heavy disguise. When it was uncovered in July 1990, Vula operated as a virtually distinct intelligence network within the ANC. The Shaik brothers played a key role in it and ran Operation Bible. Moe Shaik would later become Zuma's foreign intelligence chief. Other key operatives were Mac Maharaj (later Zuma's presidential spokesperson), Siphiwe Nyanda (later Zuma's communications minister), Nathi Mthethwa (Zuma's police minister) and Solly Shoke (Zuma's army chief).

By the mid-2000s, conspiracies and intrigues abounded. They were usually works of fiction with a splatter of truth and were leaked at strategic times, such as just before an ANC elective conference. The Zuma camp instigated its own dirty tricks campaign. Two weeks after the state had announced that the NPA was about to hurl Schabir Shaik before a judge, City Press ran an article that prosecutions boss Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid spy. As I have mentioned before, Moe Shaik later confirmed that he was behind the allegations in order “to defend the honour of the deputy president”.

Then came the Browse Mole report (discussed in Chapter Two) and the hoax e-mails. In around 2005, e-mails started circulating among ANC NEC members and journalists that supporters of Mbeki were hatching a plot to permanently remove Zuma from the political scene. These fake e-mails seem to have been created and released by a pro-Zuma faction in the intelligence community to boost Zuma in the ANC succession battle.

These plots allowed Zuma to appear as a presidential hopeful under siege while Mbeki and his henchman were revealed as nothing but schemers and manipulators. Zuma said in an interview that it was his concern for “the masses and the poor” that prompted his political enemies to try to deny him the ANC leadership and the presidency.

* * *

Zuma is light on his feet. We have all seen him dancing: his fists clenched, his arms arched forward like the tusks of an elephant, and his body hunched while “awuleth' umshini wami” (bring me my machine gun) stirs from his mouth. In front of him are thousands of ecstatic and swaying followers, tooting on horns, blowing on whistles, and swaying back and forth to old anti-apartheid tunes.

If Zuma was a career boxer, he would have tiptoed around the ring, his gloves held high and his chin straight and square. Every time Zuma seems to be out on his feet and with his adversaries pummelling away at his bullet-shaped head, he is at his most dangerous. That is when he answers with nasty uppercuts and smashing right-handers, which have sent the likes of Thabo Mbeki staggering across the ring. He has an incredible ability to cheat political defeat and to emerge with his fists in the air.

On 16 December 2007, at the ANC's national conference in Polokwane, both Mbeki and Zuma allowed their names to be put forward for the party's presidency, the first time in half a century that the post had been contested. A curt-looking Mbeki, a short man with an elfin-like appearance and overgrown eyebrows, seemed startled to find himself in Zuma's company.

By the time the ANC delegates had settled in, Mbeki should have been assured of victory. Zuma was a tainted and divisive candidate with corruption charges hanging over his head. He should have been finally counted out at Polokwane, but he brought with him the support of the trade unions, the Youth League, the South African Communist Party, his confidants in the ANC with whom he had worked over the years, and disgruntled and alienated former Mbeki supporters.

With ballots cast and votes counted, the result was announced. The comeback kid had thumped Mbeki by more than 800 votes. In his victory speech, Zuma described Mbeki as a “friend and a brother”. He then buried him.

Mbeki had a year and a half left of his second term as president, but nine months later, the ANC's National Executive Committee decided to remove him from office. Zuma delivered the news to Mbeki, who promptly resigned. ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe became caretaker president until the May 2009 election.

* * *

On 6 April 2009, prosecutions boss Mokotedi Mpshe addressed the nation and said: “I stand before you today to announce the most difficult decision I ever made in my life. It was not an easy task at all.” He said fresh evidence had emerged after the NPA studied the so-called spy tapes that were unearthed during Fraser's investigation of the Browse Mole report and those in the hands of Zuma's lawyer, Michael Hulley.

Mpshe said that the recordings showed political interference in the prosecution of Zuma, which amounted to an abuse of office. He concluded that it was “neither possible nor desirable for the NPA to continue with the prosecution of Mr Zuma”. In justifying his decision, Mpshe emphasised there had been a valid case against Zuma. He added that the prosecution team itself believed the case should continue and that a court must decide whether to stop the prosecution because of political meddling.

It later emerged that part of Mpshe's legal justification had been lifted from a Hong Kong judgment. That judgment was, however, later overturned on appeal.

* * *

By the time Jacob Zuma took the oath of office in May 2009, the daughter of one of his friends was pregnant with his 20th child. The child was born three months before Zuma married for the fifth time. By then, he had been unmasked as a venal, kept and gluttonous politician who had scant control over his carnal urges.

South Africans had been alerted to an impending calamity, yet an ebullient mood pervaded large parts of the country as Zuma vowed at his inauguration: “This is a moment of renewal. I will devote myself to the well-being of the Republic and all of its people.”

After the Mbeki era, when hundreds of thousands of Aids invalids wasted away before his very eyes while he denied them life-saving medication, South Africans opted for a “people's president”: the man cuddling babies in the townships and arousing the hopes of those whose hands he clasped. What they didn't see (or want to see) was that, long before his rise to the presidency, Zuma had been infected by the most noxious disease of politics: greed. And we all know that greed is a fat demon with a small mouth, and whatever you feed it is never enough.

I urge Jacob Zuma to read It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-blower, written by the distinguished foreign correspondent Michela Wrong. It is a frightening tale of what happens when state corruption goes rogue and becomes endemic.

Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi presided over two decades of state pilfering and repression. He was succeeded by the country's first democratically elected president, Mwai Kibaki, who proclaimed at his inauguration in 2002: “Corruption would now cease to be a way of life in Kenya.” In a country where ordinary citizens pay an estimated 16 bribes monthly to state and law enforcement officials, Kibaki promised the end of graft. He appointed veteran journalist and forensic investigator John Githongo as the head of the anti-corruption authority and gave him vast powers and an office in State House.

Githongo unearthed the existence of Anglo Leasing, a British-based company that had 18 contracts with the Kenyan government for the supply of everything from a forensic laboratory to a navy frigate and jeeps. Sixteen per cent of the government's expenditure in 2003 and 2004 was paid to this company – which turned out to be nothing more than a street address in Liverpool. The Anglo Leasing payments were siphoned off to Kibaki's associates and cronies. They repeatedly told Githongo to back off. After being shunned by previous regimes because of tribal differences, the Kibaki cabal was in power and it was their time to eat – much like the previous power cliques had done. Githongo initially pretended to ignore their graft while collecting evidence. He surreptitiously wore a recording device while colleagues discussed the details of the scam – only to have it malfunction and begin playing back their incriminating conversation.

His cover was blown. Kibaki refused to support Githongo, who received death threats and was tailed by Kenyan intelligence. He fled the country and blew the whistle in London. A few token officials and ministers lost their jobs, but Kibaki was exonerated and it was then back to business as usual.

In 2007, Kibaki stole the election from his challenger, Raila Odinga. They were from different tribes, and decades of suppressed ethnic resentment and anger at the government exploded when Kibaki had himself sworn in. Tribal killings swept through Kenya and scores of people died. Githongo had warned against manifestations like these unless the government truthfully addressed corruption.

Zuma's shenanigans are not unlike that of Kenya's Mwai Kibaki. And that is why Jacob Zuma should read It's Our Turn to Eat. Because he's eating, and those around him are also eating – while many have nothing to eat. That is why resentment at his rule is growing, leading to the ANC losing almost ten per cent of its support in the 2016 local elections and the Democratic Alliance controlling the biggest metros in the country. If the trend continues, the ANC will probably lose the 2019 general election, despite Zuma's July 2016 assurance that the ANC will rule until the coming of Christ.

On the very day that I write this paragraph, the statistician-general announced that unemployment has hit a 13-year high. Nearly 28 per cent of South Africans (9.3 million jobseekers) have no work, and very few of them will ever find a job. They are unemployed for life. Exports are falling, commodity prices are falling, growth rate forecasts are falling, business confidence is falling. We have become world leaders in income inequality, racial tension, rape and illicit financial outflows.

A few hours later, global ratings agencies S&P and Fitch confirmed South Africa's downgrading to junk status – which Treasury, under new finance minister Malusi Gigaba, welcomed. Yes, imagine a Trevor Manuel or Pravin Gordhan embracing junk.

There is no dispute: Jacob Zuma has ripped the society and state to shreds. He swore at his inauguration to be faithful to our country and that he would observe, uphold and maintain our beautiful Constitution. It was all bullshit. From the moment he became president, the Republic was in the market. Under his rule, South Africa has become a two-government country. There is an elected government, and there is a shadow government – a state within the state.

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South Africa has many John Githongos – a growing list of dedicated and skilled civil servants, law enforcement officials and prosecutors who have been malevolently and deceitfully purged from the civil service. They have honed and polished South Africa's law enforcement capacity but they crossed swords with high offices when they stumbled upon corruption perpetrated by the politically connected cronies of the ruling party, powerful politicians, and Jacob Zuma and his family members.

This band of remarkable public servants are heroes of our democracy because in the face of injustice, corruption and nepotism, they have refused to let their voices lie silent. In most cases – despite their being experienced, skilled, reputable and independent-minded – the president's keepers drove them from their offices through discrediting campaigns, trumped-up charges, false allegations, malicious rumours and fake dossiers. Their careers were ruined, they were humiliated and shamed, persecuted and prosecuted, and had their life savings exhausted because of malicious litigation.

The most important among those in the law enforcement agencies who were hounded into submission were former SARS acting commissioner Ivan Pillay and three of his executives – Gene Ravele, Johann van Loggerenberg and Pete Richer. They were joined by former national director of public prosecutions Mxolisi Nxasana, former Hawks head Anwa Dramat, former Gauteng Hawks head Major-General Shadrack Sibiya, former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head Major-General Johan Booysen, former head of the NPA's Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit Glynnis Breytenbach, and former State Security Agency director-general Gibson Njenje.

Their demise triggered an exodus of competent government officials. For example, following the departure of the SARS top executives in late 2014 and early 2015, more than fifty managers resigned within a year. Many performed vital functions at South Africa's most crucial state institution but they rejected the leadership of Tom Moyane, a Zuma choirboy whose highest previous job in government was that of prisons boss.

“Dissident” politicians like former finance ministers Pravin Gordhan and Nhlanhla Nene, deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas, former tourism minister Derek Hanekom and former mining minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi were also axed for discharging false notes in the Zuma choir.

Business Day reminded us that by the end of March 2017, Zuma had made 11 cabinet reshuffles since coming to power in May 2009. He has made 126 changes to the national executive: 62 changes to ministerial positions, 63 changes to deputy ministerial positions, and one change to the deputy presidency. After his reshuffle in March 2017, the national executive (ministers and deputy ministers) stood at a bloated 74 people.

In getting rid of “troublemakers”, Zuma and his keepers gutted the country's most crucial institutions by not just getting rid of top-level civil servants, but replacing them with hand-picked acting successors and low-level ANC apparatchiks who were in most cases nothing but lame ducks and weaklings.

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The one institution that was untouched during Zuma's first term in office was the South African Revenue Service (SARS), the crown jewel in the civil service. Year after year, it didn't just meet its targets, it surpassed them, enabling government to pay social grants to millions upon millions of poor people. SARS was hailed internationally, and its systems were studied by business schools over the world.

Long before I set out to write this book, it was revealed how the top structure of SARS – comprising Ivan Pillay, Gene Ravele, Johann van Loggerenberg, Pete Picher – was purged after a series of articles in the Sunday Times that they had run a “rogue unit”. The stories were fabrications but nonetheless saw the rise of Zuma acolyte Tom Moyane as the hatchet man who rid SARS of its tried and tested top executives.

Van Loggerenberg wrote a book, Rogue: The Inside Story of SARS's Elite Crime-Busting Unit, in which he chronicled how his affair with a Pretoria attorney became the trigger for the “capture” of SARS and the departure of its experienced and independent-thinking officials.

What I discovered in my research for this book adds another, untold layer to the SARS narrative. I gave a handful of friends the chapters on SARS to read before publication. It left them devastated and disillusioned, and they agreed that they had never imagined the Zuma regime would descend to these lows to preserve its survival.