Sacking Zuma would be just hacking one limb off a sick body

It is ironic that Bloemfontein had to be the venue where President Jacob Zuma was so publicly humiliated by some Cosatu members at Monday's May Day celebrations. Workers have finally recognised him for the windbag he's always been.

It was of course in that City of Roses that the black intelligentsia — chiefs, priests, editors, lawyers, educationists — met to form the ANC in 1912, two years after the establishment of the Union which excluded the black majority from any say in the affairs of the country.

Bloemfontein has thus become the ANC's spiritual home.

The party has often repaired to the Free State capital — ironically known historically as a verkrampte stronghold under the National Party — for major events or for some ideological sustenance.

story_article_left1

There was no luck for Zuma this time. He was hounded out of town, by the very people who propelled him to power and have stood by him amid countless scandals. The tide has clearly turned, and he didn't seem to see it coming.

The biggest loser, were Zuma to be forced out, would be Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, his ex-wife, who, in her desperate attempt to succeed him, has unwisely aligned herself with him and his corrupt cronies.

She has obviously resolved that her ex-husband, despite his slew of scandals, still commands enough support to carry her to the presidency. But he has to be there to the end to hand over the baton to her. His forced or premature departure from office would be disastrous for her.

Cyril Ramaphosa, on the other hand, should be cock-a-hoop. His courageous, if long-winded, speech at the Chris Hani memorial lecture in Uitenhage last month has been well received, and Zuma's calamitous May Day escapade is a godsend. The stars seem to be lining up nicely in Cyril's favour. But many are yet to be convinced that he has the backbone for the campaign or to fight dirty.

While the race to succeed Zuma is obviously an eye-catching spectacle, what is important for the country to consider is what happens after Zuma is gone. So much damage has been done that it won't be enough to simply plonk down another leader and expect things to proceed swimmingly. Whoever takes over will inherit a fine mess. How, where and with whom do we begin to clean it up?

And while the story has been about Zuma — he certainly initiated and enabled the corruption — the entire ANC has become a criminal enterprise, and that is not an exaggeration.

It is a feeding frenzy — from lowly councils to the provinces to the national government, a day job is merely a sideline. Stealing from the state has become a lucrative enterprise. In the words of no less a personage than Jackson Mthembu, the ANC is "corrupt to the core" and is looting "as if there's no tomorrow".

The ANC's "cadre deployment" policy has also meant that the cancer has spread into, and undermined the efficient running of, state institutions.

Corruption and incompetence are the twin evils. Corruption is everywhere one looks. SAA, Transnet, Eskom, PetroSA ... the list is endless.

Corruption is not only tolerated, it is rewarded.

For instance, Brian Molefe, who played a starring role in the public protector's state capture report, is made an MP, and then it turns out he's been given a R30-million golden handshake by the Eskom board for 18 months' work as CEO.

story_article_right2

And his successor comes to the job dragging his own scandal, including awarding a contract worth millions to a company associated with a relative. The guy is still in his well-paying job. The chairman, Ben Ngubane, sees nothing wrong with that.

Ngubane is himself, of course, being rewarded for the mess he created at the SABC, where Hlaudi Motsoeneng is another of his proud products. Nobody gets fired. The incompetents, the corrupt and their enablers simply get recycled.

It's not as if these things are not known and are a revelation. They are already in the public domain, and they're only the tip of the iceberg. But we're so immune to wrongdoing that we're almost damaged as a society.

The institutions that are supposed to deal with the rot have also been compromised. The National Prosecuting Authority was last seen comically trying to prosecute the finance minister on trumped-up charges. It's head has become a figure of fun. The Hawks are a joke. Even the office of public protector, which had been the last bastion of our endangered democracy, has itself been captured.

Our democratic experiment has been an extraordinarily depressing spectacle.

Zuma's departure, however it comes, will be like hacking off a limb from a body that's completely cancerous. The whole body has to be discarded. That's likely to happen if Dlamini-Zuma heads the ANC ticket in 2019. Ramaphosa will give the ANC a fighting chance, but he's unlikely to be able to drain the swamp. The party is contaminated in its entirety. It won't be in any position to clean up its own mess. The ANC has to lose if South Africa is to be saved.

Besides, it's never a good thing in a democracy for one party to be in power for such a long time.