We'd all be laughing if Zuma's blunders weren't such a tragedy

Appointing Heath to a crucial corruption-busting post takes the cake

THE story of President Jacob Zuma's blunders would be funny if he were not the man who sits in the nation's highest office.

Today any conversation with his name in it is bound to generate laughter. He has become the dream of South African comedians, who feed on his every action.

It is not that he has a low IQ or anything like that. In fact the very opposite is true, as he has shown through his crafty rise to high office.

The thing with Zuma is that he does not take his party, his public office, or the people of South Africa seriously. As a result the party, the state and the people of the country do not take him seriously, either.

Think about it. In January 2008, just weeks after he was elected president of the ANC, his first major public act was to add to his stock of wives. Then, in 2009, after being elected president of the republic, he again added to his tally. And he did so again a while later, albeit in a less spectacular way.

I'm willing to bet my favourite Orlando Pirates poster that he will do so again before his term ends.

So, in the past few years we have been subjected to the unseemly spectacle of seeing the president arrive at the opening of parliament with a phalanx of wives. They jostle and give each other jealous glares before they doze off in the VIP seats. And on state visits he arrives in foreign capitals with a different partner in tow each time.

Or, as on the recent visit to the United Nations in New York, with two in tow.

Ordinarily we shouldn't really bother about an individual's private shenanigans. That should be his or her business and should serve only to brighten page 3 and spice up the back page.

However, we should care when the person is the president of the republic.

And we should care more when his daytime stuff-ups betray his nocturnal distractions.

Which is exactly the thing that has characterised the Zuma presidency. Hardly a month (the less generous would say a week) goes by without some cringeworthy blunder from the man we unfortunately have to call our president. South Africans, ever able to balm pain with cheerfulness, have simply ignored the president or laughed at him during his term of office.

We laughed because his blunders were so big and obvious.

Take Menzi Simelane's appointment as head of the National Prosecuting Authority three years ago. It was clear even to the blind Zimbabwean beggars at Johannesburg's intersections that to appoint someone who had been panned the way he was by the Ginwala Commission of Inquiry was to play with fire. But Zuma, even with the benefit of the commission's report in front of him, walked into the disaster zone with eyes wide open. The dilemma he faces now - sitting with a national prosecutor deemed by the Supreme Court of Appeal to be unfit for office - was something he could have easily avoided.

With the Simelane klap still hot on his cheeks, Zuma decided to create a new crisis for himself. He appointed Advocate Willem Heath to head the Special Investigating Unit. Even before Heath gave the infamous interview to City Press last Sunday, it was obvious that Zuma was courting disaster again. In the period since leaving the judiciary after falling out with president Thabo Mbeki, Heath has not covered himself in glory.

The former corruption buster found himself in bed with the Kebble family who, as everyone knows, are no cherubim.

He was most closely tied to the late Brett Kebble, for whom he operated a dodgy trust account and on whose behalf he facilitated dodgy payments.

Then the corruption buster turned his attention to helping Zuma, another man who was facing a myriad corruption charges. Spurred on by his hatred of Mbeki, Heath used his skill and legendary energy to help Zuma escape the might of the law.

Heath was instrumental in ensuring that Zuma never had to answer for the millions he made through corrupt relationships with shady businessmen.

He is one of the reasons South Africa is led by a corruptible president.

And today Heath heads up the corruption-busting SIU.

He had hardly settled into office when he saw fit to prattle on about how Mbeki had engineered Zuma's corruption and rape cases and how the High Court in Durban, the SCA and the Constitutional Court were wrong about Schabir Shaik's corruption conviction.

Zuma now has no choice but to show Heath the door and go searching for a new head of the SIU.

But wait - he won't do that before committing another monumental blunder. Luckily for the nation, he is out of the country this week and the protocol people travelling with him will, as always, make sure he does not embarrass us abroad.

When he gets back to South Africa, though ...