I know just what former president Jacob Zuma is going through. This week he appeared in court for the third time this year as his trial on fraud charges approaches. He has a new legal team and they have an exciting new strategy.
When you're heading to court, your lawyers hire an advocate (sometimes two) - the person in court who speaks to the judge. You go to endless meetings at your lawyer's offices where they talk to the advocate and largely ignore you, the client. You are there to sign stuff.
They talk about a strategy. Listening to them is like walking in on a high school reunion; they all know each other, they all have stories starting with "Remember when ... ", they've all got an opinion about the opposing legal team and they talk a lot about who they'd prefer the judge to be.
As the client, you're an afterthought. It occurred to me watching Zuma start and finish his appearance on Friday that even though he has obviously found money to defend himself again (probably from the Guptas, but who knows) and the usual suspects turned up again to support him, he is alone. He will be going to court well into his 80s.
His new advocate, Mike Hellens SC, informed the court that the Zuma team had enough money going forward even if state funding were to fall away.Hellens's new strategy (replacing the old Michael Hulley one of asking the NPA to review its decision to charge Zuma for fraud in connection with the old arms deal of the late 1990s) is to ask for a permanent stay of prosecution. They'll be back in court in Pietermaritzburg at the end of November.
Hellens was confident on Friday that this would work and hey, this is KwaZulu-Natal we're talking about here. The dice are loaded and everyone knows it. It's where Judge Chris Nicholson changed South African history by letting Zuma off the hook back in 2008 when he argued, as Hellens intimated he would argue now, that the case against Zuma was politically motivated.
So assume the worst and Hellens wins his permanent stay. The state will appeal and, as happened to the Nicholson judgment, the Pietermaritzburg ruling will be overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeal. Hellens will appeal that and it will go to the Constitutional Court. It will back the appeal court and direct the trial back to the high court. By then Zuma is approaching 80.Further charges against him are by now assembled and ready in the wake of the Zondo commission hearings, which start next month, into state capture. These are much more serious than the arms deal charges. One or more of them could even be treason.
Fortunately for Zuma, Hellens is still being paid by whoever to help. Even he will be old by the time this is over. The state capture trials will start, or be under way, round about December 2022 when the ANC next holds an elective conference. Cyril Ramaphosa will be seeking a second term as ANC leader. Zuma supporters will want to stop him. But there's by now a new wave of younger leaders from KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng jostling for position. Who can offer them more?
Normally, incumbency has its advantages, but Ramaphosa has to deliver on both radical economic transformation (land, I'm afraid, one way or another) and its opposite, economic growth. He has little time.
Zuma's ordeal, though, is that no one "helping" him has much interest in a quick win. Like I said, he's just the client. And it suits Ramaphosa to have him tied up in court, however much he might play the victim. By then evidence will have emerged before Judge Raymond Zondo that will make people's eyes water.
What you have to watch as Zuma's court appearances become more frequent is the ANC chairman in KwaZulu-Natal, Sihle Zikalala. Thus far he has attended all of Zuma's hearings. It is as close to "official" ANC support as Ramaphosa could reasonably live with.
But Zikalala is critical to the way Ramaphosa handles the threat a panicky Zuma could pose, especially should Hellens ever stumble.
Zuma spent years trying to engineer a KwaZulu-Natal provincial congress that would elect Zikalala and fire Senzo Mchunu as chairman. Mchunu now runs Ramaphosa's ANC office and Zikalala was re-elected, unopposed, as KwaZulu-Natal provincial chairman a week ago with the support of Mchunu and Ramaphosa.
It's crazy, but he's Ramaphosa's guy for the moment, and there he was after Zuma emerged from court, sitting at Msholozi's right hand. He's there to make sure Jacob and the martyr-seeking mob trying to find political traction of their own in his legal troubles don't succeed. It's God's work...