Business as usual for big chief Zuma

GuptagateLurching from disaster to disaster, the president nonetheless predicts victory at the polls

UPHOLDING Judge Hilary Squires's judgment on Schabir Shaik in November 2006, the Supreme Court of Appeal made the following finding:

"The payments to Zuma, a powerful politician, over a period of more than five years were made calculatingly. Shaik subverted his friendship with Zuma into a relationship of patronage designed to achieve power and wealth. He was brazen and often behaved aggressively and threateningly, using Zuma's name to intimidate people, and particularly potential business partners, into submitting to his will. He sought out people eager to exploit Zuma's power and influence and colluded with them to achieve mutually beneficial results. 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."

It remains a remarkable indictment of a sitting president. More remarkable still, substitute "Gupta" for "Shaik" and many contemporary similarities appear.

Both high and appeal courts found that relationship to be corrupt. No such judgment exists on Zuma's arrangement with his new patrons, the Gupta brothers, but the same parasitic symbiosis would seem to apply: use of the Zuma name in exchange for support, financial and otherwise.

You have to admire Zuma's gumption. In various unethical ways, bar out-and-out corruption, he has simply replicated with the Guptas his relationship with Shaik. It would seem that the only lesson he learnt from the incident - one that all but derailed his career - is that power affords immunity.

Yet, for all that, Zuma endures. Why? It is a question with a thousand answers. Let me propose one: Jacob Zuma is perceived primarily as a cultural symbol rather than a president.

Power is embedded in culture and at the apex of our cultural and political hierarchy is Zuma. Ostensibly, he embodies the principles and values that define a constitutional head of state; practically, he wears the mantle and cultural authority of a king. It is to the latter that the majority of his supporters relate, not the former. Likewise, it is a contradiction he is all too aware of and one that is entirely authentic. Those antidemocratic impulses that define his attitude to South Africa's constitutional order are born of a genuine cultural connection with a great many people, and he is the master of communicating them to his core constituency.

As a result, Zuma enjoys a special kind of political invulnerability. Patriarchy is one dominant force in traditional African culture, and to his supporters he is the ultimate patriarch. The test, for many South Africans, is not the degree to which he is accountable or transparent, but whether he is a good chief. Seen in this light, the real issue is not Zuma's relationship with the Guptas, it is his relationship with South African voters - their expectations of him and the degree to which he meets those expectations.

Consider this: in the midst of the Gupta furore, with Nkandla brewing in the background and the Central African Republic debacle on the front burner, Zuma took to the podium last week and declared that the ANC was seeking a 66% majority in 2014.

Think about that for a moment.

With every front page dedicated to an international scandal, at the heart of which lies the president's questionable relationship with the protagonists, he calmly determined this was the right time to announce that his party sought to increase its electoral support. Can there be a better illustration of naked disdain for the voter? Then again, perhaps "disdain" is the wrong word. In the other direction, it constitutes absolute faith in the electorate's unyielding support, a statement of supreme confidence.

You cannot argue that South Africans do not take corruption seriously. It is the primary diet on which the media feeds, so we are acutely aware of just how pervasive it is. Nor can you say the opposition does not give it due regard - it remains a central focus of their collective politics. Civil society, too, places enormous emphasis on corruption and its eradication. What then? Inevitably, one is forced to turn the attention back to the voters themselves. They have the facts - why do they not act on them?

Viewed through a cultural lens, the reason is more easily discernable. The chief is due what patronage comes his way. Indeed, patronage is an expectation, as opposed to a regulated possibility. The Shaiks and Guptas of this world are a natural consequence of power. One must ingratiate oneself to the chief with gifts and goodwill if one is to secure his blessing.

If not, why is this sort of attitude not punished at the polls?

When Zuma told supporters this year that patronage to the ANC would be met with financial reward, spokesman Jackson Mthembu defended this as illustrative of the "African tradition of giving". In light of the Gupta's Waterkloof landing, it is worth revisiting Zuma's original comment: "You can support and be a supporter, but if you go beyond that and become a member, if you're a businessman, your business will multiply... Everything you touch will multiply. I've always said that a wise businessperson will support the ANC ... because supporting the ANC means you're investing very well in your business."

If that attitude represents a general and acceptable standard, one might well ask why anyone is surprised that the Guptas could land their plane at a military base.

In Zuma's world, the Guptas are a natural extension of those networks of patronage that define traditional African culture.

It is a message that the ANC in general and Zuma in particular have proudly conveyed. And you can be sure it is a well-tested formula that delivers results. Therefore, remarkably and on the back of it, for Zuma it constitutes a solid enough reason to expect an increase in support.

Consistently and regardless of any outrage they might generate, those more traditional cultural values Zuma holds so dear blur his view of the democratic boundaries that define our state, and yet he invokes them anyway. He speaks of how "you have fewer rights because you are a minority"; of how we should "solve African problems the African way" (as opposed to the constitutional way); of how "same-sex marriage is a disgrace to the nation and to God"; of how prisons are unnecessary in African culture, the consequences of "people who cannot resolve problems".

None of these comments has ever been met with any real electoral consequences. Why should they be? They are an allusion to an unofficial constitution that many in South Africa abide by.

I would not be too distracted by the Gupta affair. Zuma has no more regard for any problems it might raise than he did for his relationship with Shaik, a matter for formal interrogation the consequences of which will produce no damage to his general standing. No, the real issue is the declaration that Zuma saw fit to make at the height of the outrage, when public condemnation peaked: "We are going for a two-thirds majority. We want a decisive victory, comrades."