In the centre of Pietermaritzburg there stands a miracle of physics and philosophy: Schrödinger’s Podium, an object that raises the praise singers of Jacob Zuma high above the street and yet simultaneously allows them to prostrate themselves as low as any self-respecting South African can grovel.
The courtiers trotting up and down its steps, however, don’t seem to understand its phenomenal qualities. Instead, they are using those reality-bending boards simply as a makeshift stage on which to perform their wretched little morality play: “Msholozi (Long May He Cause The Rains To Come) Is The Victim Of A Plot”.
Just this week we heard the health ministry asking for ‘time and space’, presumably to allow it to figure out which Digital Vibes e-mails to shred and which junior cadres to throw under which buses.
To be fair, they’re not wrong. It’s pretty obvious that Zuma is the victim of a plot in which the Guptas met him, weighed him up in about seven seconds and proceeded to make him dance like a giggling little marionette. I know a great many South Africans see Zuma as a kind of Bond villain, but if he were really an evil mastermind, he and his family would be posting weekly Instagram clips of them giving us the finger from their Dubai penthouse suite, not schlepping into drab little Pietermaritzburg to be buoyed up by modest rent-a-crowds bused in from whichever ANC branch accepted the lowest quote.
Luckily, Team Zupta clearly has a pretty good legal strategy based on the finite nature of human life and the belief that if you die of old age before you go to jail, you win. On Wednesday the former president was able to scratch another few weeks off his calendar, arguing prosecutor Billy Downer is a meanie and winning an adjournment until July 19, at which point I assume his team will launch their main argument, namely, that the judge has a prejudicial haircut and that the trial should therefore be postponed until haircuts are either uniform or banned outright, possibly in the latter half of 2086.
Of course, endlessly delaying justice is an old ANC trick. Just this week we heard the health ministry asking for “time and space”, presumably to allow it to figure out which Digital Vibes e-mails to shred and which junior cadres to throw under which buses. (“Just not anything coming from the Free State and heading to Pietermaritzburg, comrades! The one carrying Carl’s packed lunch already got a puncture, and we all know what happens when his blood sugar drops.”)
Luckily the postponement of the Zuma trial has now given us exactly what the health department wanted: time and space in which our media can start asking what Dr Zweli Mkhize knew, and deciding which one of three possible people he might be.
After all, if he knew tens of millions were being paid to friends of his who hadn’t gone through proper tender procedures, then he is an accessory to corruption. If he didn’t know, then he’s wholly incompetent to run a ministry as essential as health.
If, on the other hand, he told his subordinates that he didn’t want to know, and that they should make very sure he never finds out, well, then he’s just a good politician; like Schrödinger’s cat and his podium existing in two states simultaneously – alive and dead, elevated and debased, informed and clueless – but, most importantly of all, being accountable in neither.
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