PATRICK BULGER | Happy couplet: Zuma, from Stalingrad to poetic justice

It’s a story so quintessentially “big-safari Africa’’ in nature and plot that Wilbur Smith might have produced it. It’s that bad. It’s made all the more authentic in that its dramatic personae neatly adhere to the stereotypes its plot so clearly demands.

It’s clichéd, perhaps, but it’s a best-seller — and we’re not even close to the finale.

First, we meet the embittered fallen leader of a once-hopeful African state, former president Jacob Zuma, the leading man in this page-turner epic set in postapartheid SA gone wrong.

Zuma, in his long climb from herdboy to disgruntled farmer-cum-rabble rouser, is the stereotypical “big man’’ who refuses to accept his time is over. Even Gwede Mantashe said he is “too old”.

Zuma dismissed Mantashe’s put-down as gratuitous age-ism, calling it “absurd”. What Mantashe surely didn’t intend with that restrained rejoinder was the suggestion that it was “absurd’’, not because Zuma is an advanced 80 years old, but because he was meant to be, um, gravely ill. Wasn’t that why he was released on medical parole? So that would make it absurd, some might say impossible. Certainly unlikely. Or does the job of ANC chair require so little vitality?

But there he was, singing and dancing at court, (at a case about his medical records!) this week, where he is bringing a “private prosecution’’ against journalist Karyn Maughan and prosecutor Billy Downer. It’s a big comedown from the days when he could summon Shaun Abrahams to do the dirty for him at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Now it’s all DIY for the laughing one. The legal equivalent of vanity publishing.

It’s a big come-down from the days when he could summon Shaun Abrahams to do the dirty for him at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). Now it’s all DIY for the laughing one.

Downer got smart with him and forced him to put down a hefty deposit with the court, in the event that he loses and the “winner’’ is left with a hefty legal bill.

What does a poor farmer from Nkandla do in a case like this? In this political novella he gets help from another wheeler-dealer. These boers make a plan.

And so, take a bow stereotype two, one Louis Liebenberg, and if he has a name like an old Afrikaner poet, it’s not a coincidence because he is a poet. A lyrical character who claims to be part Khoi, and he is coy too. And because everyone with the name Louis who gets mentioned in the media has to be a “king’’ of some sort, this Louis is the “Diamond King”. Or not, depending on who you talk to.

Anyway, it seems he stumped up R500,000 for Zuma’s latest legal battle, and earlier this year he gave Zuma two Nguni cows. And the two of them chewed the cud together at Nkandla. (Zuma and Liebenberg.) Incidentally, the cow gift must have disappointed Zuma at least a little, and he might have hoped for a bit more originality from his latest benefactor. What’s wrong with a Maserati? Or at least a Massey Ferguson?

In any event, there was a picture of the two of them, beaming in front of the chosen beasts who were no doubt looking forward to cooling off later in the firepool. And they have more than that in common.

Liebenberg has been described as a “boereverneuker”, which suggests a certain type of big-talking Afrikaner con man, a man of the soil who has woven his own story into a much bigger historical drama featuring mostly himself, especially as the injured party.

Zuma claims to talk for the common man, but presumably not for the hundreds of common men, women and children whose deaths in the July 2021 riots he happily took as a show of support for him. Liebenberg’s similarly for the little guy, especially Afrikaner.

He says all he wants to do is restore some of the mineral wealth of SA to common Afrikaners.

Very similar to Zuma in his redistributionist inclinations.

Liebenberg has an unusual way of doing this. He invites “investors’’ to “invest’’ in buying pyramids (sorry, diamonds) as part of several schemes he has been at the centre of.

Often, it seems, “investors’’ are underwhelmed by their returns, and recently Liebenberg featured at last in the financial press when the NPA obtained an order freezing about R100m in his assets as the proceeds of crime.

He recently had this overturned, but on the grounds of procedure in that the order was granted without his being able to contest it. His “procedural’’ appeal, while successful in that the order has been lifted, would have elevated him immensely in Zuma’s estimation. To complete the stereotype, Liebenberg is a Afrikaans poet of some gusto, and takes a “tribal’’ approach to politics.

He once told a TV show that his diamond dealings make the illegal legal, which language on this subject must have sounded like the glorious symphony of 1,000 cow bells to the man from Nkandla. That it is a white Afrikaner with dubious credentials who is paying for Zuma’s next instalment of his Stalingrad strategy is of no concern. When it comes to cash, colour is not an issue.

That it is a white Afrikaner with dubious credentials who is paying for Zuma’s next instalment of his Stalingrad strategy is of no concern. When it comes to cash, colour is not an issue.

And who to complete this trilogy of stereotypes, battling it out in the full glare of a constitution that seems like an afterthought to this lurid power play? It’s none other than president Cyril Ramaphosa, multimillionaire breeder of rare Ankole cattle, our rich uncle in the furniture business.

Ramaphosa, urbane and worldly, and apparently above the concerns of the common man. He’s “shocked’’ by everything he comes across, which suggests he’s out of touch, or just very sensitive. But while he’s not a man of the people, he’s no less a man of the soil, happily donning khaki at his Phala Phala game farm before settling back on his couch with a sundowner.

And as the sun sets on SA’s hopes as a modern country offering modest prosperity to all who are prepared to work for it, the dust is kicked up by these two bulls. It obscures the sun that shows our way to that better future we once took for granted. We said the constitution would equip us to bring rational solutions to our problems. We forgot that politics is about power and money. We forgot the power of the political cliché.