Chris Steyn (00:01.688)

The Zuma Effect. That is the title of a five hundred-page work on the Zuma era. With me is co-author, political scientist, Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana. Welcome, Professor.

Chris Steyn (00:20.428)

Many years of work must have gone into this book.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (00:25.349)

Yes, yes, yes, many, years of work, about five years, I think, that went into this. We had a lot of deadlines that we had set up. They came and passed, and our publisher even said, well, you know, Chaps, doesn't look like you are able to meet these deadlines. Just let me know when you finish the book, then we can...

Not that we don't like deadlines, it's just that we had a particular book in mind that we wanted to write. It had to be thorough, it had to be comprehensive, which meant doing quite a lot. Archival material, going through papers starting back in 1999, anything to do with Zuma, judgements, interviews. We interviewed more than 50 people actually. Parliamentary Committee reports. Zondo Commission reports and a whole lot of things.

So we then had to bring all that stuff together. And we kind of wanted to have the last word on the matter. It's difficult to have the last word on a subject, but we thought we wanted to write something that approximates the last word, especially because there isn't a comprehensive full text on Zuma's tenure.

You have a few texts looking at the Zondo permission, looking at State Capture, but nothing that provides a historical perspective that particularly explains why someone like him would have been president because he is an anomaly. Given the long list of ANC presidents and even post-apartheid presidents, he's just extremely unusual.

Chris Steyn (02:16.16)

Indeed.So much is known about him, yet he's still an enigma in many ways. So how would you define the Zuma Effect? Encapsulate that.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (02:31.562)

Well, you have to look at multiple factors. You can't just look at Zuma alone. Zuma is a product of multiple factors in the ANC and in our society generally.

His main card or attraction was ethnic mobilisation, ethnicity. That's how he built his base in KZN. Because the ANC had a particular problem there. It was seen as a Xhosa-dominated party. So they needed someone to give it a more familiar face. They then brought in Zuma, who stayed there for a while, participated in all the traditional events that gave it the usual Zulu traditional face. That worked. The ANC was kind of accepted, but it then developed a different brand in that province. It became associated with JZ. It didn't have its own independent image. And so when people looked at the ANC, they looked at it through Zuma. He was the ANC. And so they tended to follow the personality that was Zuma instead of the party brand. And he became quite popular. And so that was the initial base in the early 90s.

And then you have unbridled ambition on his part. In 1994, he shows up at the ANC conference, tells - he doesn't tell his own comrades in his faction that he is going to stand for chairperson of the party; they discover when they get to conference…they actually go to him, what's this that you are hearing that you are standing? He says, well, I am standing, you know, folks in KZN they want me to stand, so I am standing.

So you have this unbridled ambition, carving his own path. And this was a faction that had been in operation since the 1970s…

Mcebisi Ndletyana (04:39.869)

…led by Thabo Mbeki. They led the negotiations together outside the country and inside. So they were quite tight. They were known, they were friends, they used to plot together and all that.

But from 1994, JZ develops his own ambition, carves his own path. And they didn't think he was suitable for that post at that time because he had just been elected chairperson of KZN three months earlier, of the province for the ANC. He was an MEC, so they felt this was too much work. And they knew that JZ is not your desk-bound kind of person. So they didn't approve of his candidature, but they nonetheless supported him because he was one of their own, and he won against Jeff Radebe and Paolo Jordan in 1994.

Then again, he stood in 1997. Then Mandela was stepping down. Thabo was declared the kind to succeed Mandela. And so the deputy post opened up. His faction wanted Joel Netshitenzhe to stand as deputy, but Joel was not keen on it; he wanted to play a more background role. And so once Joel declined, and they then went for JZ. They settled for him. He was one of their own kind… the alternative that was just too unacceptable to them, like Winnie Mandela as well as Matthew Phosa. So even in 1997, when JZ stood for the deputy presidency, he was not wanted by his faction. They didn't approve his candidature.

But the one thing that he had really, which he used quite effectively, was this ethnic sensitivity amongst ANC leaders. That you needed KZN, you needed to stabilise the province, and certainly you don't need to do something that validates the stereotype that is an ANC-dominated party. Because Zuma would have said, they're opposing me, and there were memos of that…

Mcebisi Ndletyana (06:59.724)

…that whatever opposition to his candidature means opposition to Zulus, that you are against Zulus because he had become the Zulu representative in the ANC. So he was an ethnic Tenderpreneur. Right? So you have that base, KZN.

But now that he's Deputy President..in the period leading to that, throughout the 90s, he finds himself in dire financial situation. For instance, on the fourth month of being employed in government in 1994, on the fourth month, he defaults on his bond payment. News came out that he was now living off handouts from Shabir Shaik. They have this client, patron-client relationship. He gives Shaik tenders, then he gets something in return.

That becomes commonplace, known within the ANC. By 1998, there's a huge article, after he had been elected deputy president, 1998, there's a huge article that's Standard Bank is threatening to repossess his properties because he's not paying after months of trying to reach some kind of a deal. So his financial problems have just gotten worse from 1994 right up..we're talking now the fourth year later, fifth year later.

So the presidency then, or public office, a prominent public office becomes a possible way out for him to assuage his own financial problems. So as he seeks to assuage his own problems, he then does improper things, illegal things, because he has to get money through other means. His own salary is not enough.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (09:16.832)

And so the bribery thing in the Arms Deal, where he kind of promises to protect this arms dealer, that you will not be investigated, give us this thing, as long as you give me protection money, so to speak, you are good.

So it starts off as an unbridled ambition. But with a strategy, an effective strategy of exploiting ethnic sensitivities in the ANC. That's a strategy. And there's a base to which that strategy appears, which is KZN. And the ANC is fearful that this thing should be handled properly. So their instinct is to placate, agree to Zuma's demand.

But Zuma knows that this is my way to public office and once I'm in public office, I then am able to deal with my financial problems. Already he has pursued this financial interest in an illegal way. So the office becomes more important than just a source of income, but also as a shield to protect himself against legal prosecution.

But then it so happens in the early 2000s that many other people in the ANC are just in a similar situation as him. Financial problems, they are facing problems with the law. And so they coalesce around him. And some of them are in the pockets of private individuals who have problems with the law. These individuals, particularly Brett Kebble provides money to the ANC Youth League, for instance, maintains their lifestyle. …Kebble is being pursued by the NPA because he goes around stealing other people's companies. And so he finds himself in the same situation as Zuma, pursued by the NPA. So they have common cause to deal with the NPA. In fact, he wants Zuma to win so that Zuma…

Mcebisi Ndletyana (11:30.838)

…can take over, can deal with the NPA, and while Zuma is dealing with his own problem, perhaps he might just solve his problem as well by squashing charges. So Kebble funds Youth League people. They become his attack dogs against the NPA, against Mbeki, in support of Zuma. And then you have many other people who have, you know, financial problems.

But then there are other interests as well that joined the Zuma campaign because Mbeki had exercised a very strong hold on the ANC. Part of the thing that he had done in 97 was to produce a policy document that said appointment into government will take into consideration merit. In the party, yes, you can be elected based on popularity, but in government you must have technical skills. And so I will choose people that…position in the party if you're deputy president or whatever doesn't mean that you will necessarily be a premier or deputy president. So Thabo then would go on to appoint people as premiers particularly and many others were not happy with that because they felt their position in the party, chairperson of party for instance, entitles them to being premier of government in that province. So there are many other individuals then who become Thabo’s enemies on the basis of that exclusion. And so you have a…coalition really of people coming up with different grievances, coalescing around Zuma. Not so much, some of them not so much because they agreed with Zuma, but because they were opposed to Thabo.

And they knew what kind of a person Zuma was. And they were willing to settle for that because he opened an opportunity for them as well. So they stood to gain. I mean, Sandile Zungo, for instance, at the time was president of the Black Business Council, I think he was. When issues about Zuma's integrity were raised, he said, we're not electing a Pope here for the Catholic Church. We're not looking for the Dalai Lama.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (13:58.12)

So we'll take him as he comes. Zungo also had his problems with Thabo. He felt that he was being marginalised because he was not Xhosa. He thought Thabo makes his president favour Xhosa speaking business people because he had lost out on a deal, a business deal.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (14:23.731)

And when he was told that you were offering a small price, for instance, Transnet had shares in MTN and they were trying to sell those shares and Zungo kind of tendered a bid for that. The previous minister, Jeff Radebe, seemed to have approved it, but then you had a new minister, Alec Erwin, coming in with a new CEO at Transnet, Maria Ramos. They looked at that bid, and said, you're offering too less for these this year as we can get more elsewhere. And Zungo didn't think that that was the true and honest explanation. He ascribed it to him being Zulu. So he thought he should go get himself a Zulu speaking president so that he too can get deals. So this ethnic thing became quite entrenched. So Zuma's base really was KZN.

Beginning in 2002, 2003, you started seeing a campaign. That early, Zuma for president, and Zuma made frequent trips home to increase his own profile, this and that. And then when the legal charges were imposed against him in 2005, he then went around saying this was a strategy to block his aspirations to become president, primarily because he is Zulu; then you would have all sorts of emails coming up, fabricated, purported to have been written by Thabo Mbeki's people that we don't want this Zulu boy, essentially portraying their position to Zuma in ethnic terms, so that the emails were a fabrication to give some credence to this Zulu victimhood bogey.

Chris Steyn (16:54.562)

Professor, you described in the book the tools and tactics used by the Zuma faction to keep Mr Zuma in power. Share some of those with us, please.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (17:08.132)

There's the backing of these factions and different provinces in the ANC vote differently for different interests. And this opposition or support for Zuma starts manifesting quite strongly at the ANC's National General Council in 2005.

And most of these guys, as I just hinted earlier, felt marginalised, their ambitions were not fulfilled, da da da. So they support Zuma.

Zuma uses his campaign, these legal charges against him. And you have this portrayal of the charges as a...Zulu witch hunt, a witch hunt against a Zulu person. So it's kind of a resentment against Zulus. So he goes around saying this, he even calls a public meeting of his clan, Nxamalala, in Pietermaritzburg. So the base of the campaign is strongly ethnic, but you have other interests that come in. Different provinces, different leaders, provincial leaders vote differently depending on their own situation, some for personal reasons,

Mcebisi Ndletyana (18:35.976)

…unfulfilled ambition, others purely on ANC ideological things, some because Thabo Mbeki had not treated them well. So that becomes the base.

That eventually wins Polokwane in 2007. But what you see essentially is that the ANC with that victory at Polokwane, what you see is that the ANC had become a neo-patrimonial party. Neo-patrimonialism pretty much means the interest is personal. Government is personalised. There's a complete disregard for the public good, for public interests. You build a base of clients. It's a quid pro quo kind of thing. People do this for you. They support you. You give patronage in return.

And so the first sign of this neo-patrimonialism, this personal interest that other people had invested in JZ's campaign becomes quite evident even before JZ gets into office in 2009.

In 2008,... for instance, writes a paper for his ANC comrades saying that we need to immediately take control of government, especially in the provinces where you had a premier that was appointed by Thabo Mbeki or was seen as a Thabo Mbeki person. So they seek to control two things. One, who gets a tender? Secondly, who gets appointed as DG? Because those are people who are in charge of the administration.

So here, Zuma supporters are pretty much going for the spoils of victory, even before Zuma himself gets into office. And some of the premiers are also hounded out….

Others really survive because in October 2008,

Mcebisi Ndletyana (21:00.264)

COPE gets formed by people who had beeb sympathetic to Thabo Mbeki. And then that instills fear in the ANC that, you know what, if we continue to pursue these people, harass these people out of the ANC, then we risk an even wider split. So they retreat from purging them. So some of the premiers are saved because of that fear, but others had been gotten rid of, they get themselves into position. They get to allocate tenders. They decide who is appointed.

But then JZ, and this is where the beginning of the use of State institutions to protect himself begins. He wins Polokwane, but the charges are still there. And the ANC at Polokwane is quite aware of this. And one of their resolutions is that they should disband The Scorpions. And their rationale for this is that, well, The Scorpions, it's like a parallel institution to the police. They cite some old argument that at some point, it was said that you can't have parallel State institutions, which is something the Constitutional Court had struck down a lot earlier, saying what the Constitution really meant was that you can't have separate, because we are just coming out of 1994, so we had multiple police forces… and all that, so you can't have those existing separately, you need to fuse them. That's what it really meant. The argument was just false. They just created an excuse to go for The Scorpions.

So the ANC takes a party resolution to throttle this law enforcement agency, which had been quite successful in fighting crime purely because it was going for Zuma and other ANC individuals. So they then go into this charade pretending to be consulting with the public….

Mcebisi Ndletyana (23:21.367)

…in Parliament when in fact the idea was to squash this thing. And their pretence or charades is even exposed by the fact that Judge Kamphepe produces a report which she had been tasked by Thabo Mbeki to look at how you could deal with the tension that had arisen between The Scorpions and the police and all that. And Kamhepe's findings come out saying, look, The Scorpions is doing well, we just need to create a much healthier relationship with the police and the intelligence. These people are not meeting. The committee that was meant to have been set up to coordinate communication and make sure that none steps on the other one's toes, that committee is not functional. So that is why there are misunderstandings and tensions. But in the main, the Scorpion is working extremely well. You just need to make sure that lines of accountability are clearly defined, whether it accounts to justice or police, but there must be that which wasn't quite clear at the time. But it's doing well. It's fighting crime effectively. So this report is there.

By the time the committee sits in Parliament, the report had been there for more than a year. So they pretend that this report is not there. They are saying The Scorpions is not doing well; this idea that they have high rates of success, it's a fallacy. In fact, we should be propping up the police instead of The Scorpions. John Jeffery, for instance, is one of these who was a deputy minister at the time arguing this, which was foolish, was a lie. But where they were going is that they wanted to disband The Scorpions. And journalists are saying, but you know, surveys are saying The Scorpions are very popular. You have a lady there…She was an MP as well as Yunnis Carrim, saying, know, surveys mean nothing. For instance, South Africans want us to have capital punishment. So if we're to follow public opinion, then we'll be doing things against...

Mcebisi Ndletyana (25:47.063)

…we would have to kill people as a State but we think it's a good thing; so it's not always good he says it's not always good to follow surveys and in this case that survey really means nothing that the people want The Scorpion to be retained because it's effective against crime.

So they've gone obviously to kill The Scorpions so from then on they make these appointments into these institutions, institutions that were critical to the prosecution of the Zuma case. For instance, they blackmailed Mokotedi Mpshe, who started off as a very firm believer in the law, who was the NPA director at the time, that he was going to reinstate charges because the charges were still there.

And by the end of the day, he takes a decision to withdraw the charges without telling his colleagues, something that was unusual because they would normally take these decisions in consultation. Wakes up, calls a press conference, he says, case has been compromised. The prosecutor was talking with other people outside of the case, seems that there's a conspiracy, so it was compromised. He cites a judgment. Turns out that judgment was overturned.

And so the case that he was relying on was nonexistent. And earlier on… the Supreme Court had struck down Chris Nicholson's judgment, who had earlier acquitted Zuma, saying, yes, there's a political conspiracy here, so we can't continue with the case. And the Supreme Court says, well, even if you suspect that there might be something untoward, you still have to go to court to present your evidence. It's up to the court to decide whether there's anything, there's any merits in the case. So Mpshe does this thing unusual, can't explain, there's no law for it. And everybody's wondering, what the hell happened to Mpshe?

And then it turns out a few years later…

Mcebisi Ndletyana (28:04.244)

…Mpshe was blackmailed by Zuma people. He had an affair apparently with a staff member at NPA and the intelligence surveilled him and they put in cameras and stuff. They apparently videoed him having sex with this staff member. So they used this thing to blackmail him.

And then they would go on now on this thing of appointing people who were either vulnerable, on whom they had files that they could manipulate, or just administrators who were simply too ambitious.

Look at Nomgcobo Jiba who was appointed NPA deputy director. Her husband had a criminal record, used clients' money, was convicted. He had a record. Zuma expunged that record. So Jiba was then, Nomgcobo o was then in...in Zuma's debt. That's how Zuma then brings her in. She then does this thing to pay back the debt.

You had the same thing with Shaun Abrahams, who was way, way, down in the hierarchy of prosecutors at NPA, but very close to Namgcobo Jiba. And since she couldn't be appointed because she was taking decisions to placate Zuma, they really had to flout the law.

They couldn't set Zuma free without flouting the law because Zuma really had a case to answer. So they flouted the law, they were plotting with all sorts of other allies, Zuma allies.

And obviously civil society challenged these cases and she lost the cases. So Zuma couldn't appoint her as a permanent director of the NPA. So Jiba suggested Abrahams. Abrahams wasn't expecting to be appointed…

Mcebisi Ndletyana (30:32.271)

…very excited. He takes the post and he tries to pay back. And so he uses the NPA to delay on the Zuma prosecution… pretty much go after Zuma critics such as Pravin Gordhan.

So you have the NPA, then you have the police, commissioner of police. He starts off with Cele thinking that Cele would be a luck, but Cele is fairly independent so he decides that Cele is not good, then gets rid of him over….it was a… of signing off some lease building to a private person, but it turns out that Cele was not even involved that much in that deal. Other people were and those people were not really dealt with. But that appears to have been a way to get rid of him to bring in someone else. There's a lady who comes in, forget her name now, the first female commissioner of the police. No police experience. She's also suffers from unbridled ambition, takes the job where she does a very terrible job with it.

So you have these series of undeserving people who don't expect to have these positions on their own merit. They're shocked that they're even appointed. So they spend most of their time paying back this debt to the president for doing something that they never thought they would ever achieve in their lives.

In the Public Protector's office as well, you have the same thing. Then in the Public Protector's office, we're pretty much saying that particularly Busisiwe Mkhwebane, that she was an intelligence project.

I mean, even her manner of appointment on the morning of the interviews, for instance, someone who was really, most people thought would be appointed as the deputy at the time…

Mcebisi Ndletyana (32:55.866)

…But on the day of the interviews, the intelligence shows up, intelligence people saying, he is actually a Zimbabwean, he's not a South African citizen. And yet this chap had been acting there for years. He was deputy at times, he would act and all that…. And so he's out of the way.

Then Desai, the judge at the Western Cape High Court, they raise issues about previous rape accusations, you know, and Desai, those issues kind of cripple him and then boom, Mkhwebane comes in. And at the time she had worked previously for South African intelligence. So there were issues with this person. Once a spook, someone said, once a spook, always a spook. You know, so, and she proves them right.

From the very beginning she has this hostile attitude towards private independent media. Very close she is, shows closeness to the Guptas, for instance. And one of the stories we heard was that she immediately on the first day, she switched the channel, TV channel, she switched the TV channel from ENCA to the Gupta station.

And when she came in, the State Capture report obviously was about to come out. In fact, yes, Thuli was about to release it. And JZ tried to interdict that. And she just stepped back and said she's not going to defend….

Mcebisi Ndletyana (35:08.894)

…the legal action by JZ, which meant that if it's not defended by the Public Protector's office, JZ would have most likely won.

So the opposition came in to defend that. And it later came out JZ, because JZ had lied, saying Thuli Madonsela had not consulted with him in the course of the investigation, and Thuli leaked audio recordings showing that actually, you know, they did meet and JZ promised to provide answers, but he never did. He was just stalling her, hoping that her term would expire and then she would not be able to issue the report. And the successor would then manage somehow to kill the report. He miscalculated, obviously, and Thuli could see through all these shenanigans. That is why she made the recordings and released them.

Now, Busisiwe does something very strange. She lays a court case, a charge against Thuli for leaking the recordings. She's actually saying other people raised concern that she had leaked the recordings. And one of these people she says was Vytjie Mentor. And Vytjie says, no, I never, I never laid any complaints. So you're lying about me.

So, that was her showing her cards, that she was on the JZ side. And she would go on to rely on JZ's network for media releases, for advice from people like Paul Ngobeni the lawyer who was chased out of Cape Town with fake... He had been disbarred in the States as a lawyer, for instance, and was appointed at UCT as a registrar. And when that came out that he had been disbarred, then that created problems for him at UCT. He then became bitter and joined forces with these Zuma people.

You had the same thing with Sipho Seepe, who had been supportive of Zuma against Thabo because he felt that Thabo…

Mcebisi Ndletyana (37:34.373)

…had not appointed him as VC of some university when he felt he was entitled to government or the ministry had not supported his candidature.

So she uses these people. She also uses Arthur Fraser who was at the intelligence at the time. She uses an…out and out, Gupta person paid by Gupta as a mercenary really writing articles attacking Gupta opponents, journalists, anyone who criticized the Guptas…So she relies on this network of Zuma assassins and henchmen, mercenaries. So in our assessment, really, she was an intelligence project.

So those institutions, Public Protector, the police, the NPA, and he also tries to meddle with the judiciary. He was after the judiciary. The police would have to investigate, open a case. The NPA would have to prosecute. That is why he had interest there. And ultimately, the court would have to decide. So he goes for the courts.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (39:03.301)

Especially for these guys, he felt that they were critical of him. At some point, Pius Langa gets closer to retirement. Dikgang Moseneke was deputy at the time, and so precedents had been that the deputy succeeds the incumbent. Langa...closer to his retirement date, goes to see the president since he's about to leave, and to advise on who maybe should succeed him. First gets there, he waits for three hours already before he sees him.

By this time, JZ has had a lot of problems with the Constitutional Court because he had been visiting the court quite frequently. And the court had ruled against him many times, so the court had become his enemy. So he's not happy with Langa, makes him wait for three hours and finally they meet. After the meeting, Langa goes to the office and tells Dikgang that, chap, I don't think this guy is going to appoint you. He doesn't, he's not crazy about your appointment. And indeed, when time comes, JZ doesn't. Instead, he appoints Sandile Ncgobo who only had two years left in his tenure, to snub Dikgang, certainly, because he saw them as opponents of his…

Ncgobo's two years come close to an end, but JZ wants to extend it by five years, something unheard of. But Ncgobo very disappointingly agrees to this. It went against the rules. You either retire at 72 or after 12 years of service.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (41:23.042)

Both those he had reached while he had served for more than 12 years. And his colleagues fight this, they oppose it, and they ended up having to rule on it. So they came up with the judgment that the president cannot do this, this is a violation of the law…he has to go home, has to leave, has to retire.

So he looks around and then he appoints the most undeserving person, Mogoeng Mogoeng. He has never written anything noteworthy. He's anti-intellectual, hardly writes anything. He's homophobic, religious, fanatic, and just... And the opposite, the opposite of our Constitution and opposite of progressive ideas, really.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (42:19.968)

So he appoints, and the reason he appoints Mogoeng is that they were friends. I mean, this is what we write about. They are friends. He had met him somewhere, introduced by a common friend. So he thought, okay, this one, people don't even think highly about him. And so he will really play ball, just like others that play ball and who are grateful for the appointment.

So he comes in, but Mogoeng has to act within a court that has serious-thinking people come around like Dikgang and Dikgang remains deputy chief justice. So he remains in court most of the time when the chief justice does all sorts of other things going to this and that and he was able then to maintain his influence within that court…because of the discussions and this and that as the deputy justice he would lead those discussions.

So JaZ really was never able to also influence judgment or composition of the Constitutional Court in order to get favourable judgments. So he really failed in many other aspects.

And so at some point, his harm to the ANC becomes obvious because revelations about his impropriety continue to hit the public.

But interestingly, the ANC in 2012 re-elects him with an even higher majority. In 2007 he was elected by 60%. In 2012 the ANC elects him by 75%.

And yet at the time, more than 30 newspaper articles had come out showing all his corruption. So he was even more popular, even though he had become more corrupt, partly because he was working for them. They also had their hands in their troughs all over the place. But the public disapproves of this.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (44:39.353)

And the ANC starts declining…and it continues to decline. In 2016, they lose a number of metros. And they're like, we have to change because this guy is a liability.

And they start, the ANC, a few brave individuals, Hanekom, Joel Netshitenzhe. Hanekom was a minister at the time, proposes that JZ should be recalled. That proposal fails. Next thing, JZ fires Hanekom from his Cabinet. The next motion was brought in by Joel Netshitenzhe. Joel, fortunately for him, is an independent. He doesn't work for government. He runs the Research Institute, MISTRA. So he faces no backlash from Jay-Z. But that too fails.

The NEC want to keep him, primarily because the position of president of the republic for JZ gives him a lot of power. Most people would lose their jobs. He would influence their receipt of tenders. So he uses State power just not just for himself, but to intimidate and silence criticism.

And so it then lies on independent people outside to mobilise for his removal. So the veterans of the ANC, which starts off as group 101 veterans, Sheila Sisulu… Wally Serote, Barbara Masekela…all of them are part of that. Initially, they start off thinking that they can persuade JZ to leave, they can appeal to his conscience, and senior ANC people with moral authority. So, ahead of the 2017 elective conference, they propose a special conference….

Mcebisi Ndletyana (47:02.571)

…where they would invite not just ANC members, broader society, people who are sympathetic to the ANC, to talk about leadership and to set guidelines for the elective conference later in December 2017. So they want to hold this conference around February, March of 2017.

The ANC, JZ initially proposed this idea, he ridicules them, he says, who are these people? They haven't been attending ANC branch meetings, to all of a sudden come here telling us what to do. And some of them are bought by business. They have their own interests. They are proxies of certain individuals. Kind of ridicules them. But then at some point, he also realises that these are moral leaders of the ANC. They carry a lot of influence within society. And they are really ANC. So one could not dismiss them simply because they didn't have official positions in the ANC. And so he agrees.

But the ANC generally refuses to have this policy conference, this special conference, where they would have set these guidelines for who must be, what are the problems, what kind of leaders we need, because the veterans wanted to have these commitments from the ANC so that when conference convenes, conference pretty much is guided by this and most likely have credible individuals. But they refused to have the special conference. And the veterans ultimately realised that, you know what, we can't pussyfoot around this issue. We might as well state it upfront that this man must resign now. Because he had rebuffed them really, he had told them to f…off pretty much. So they then joined a popular civil society campaign.

You have two give ot to them that really start coming up, particularly after the firing Nene….

Mcebisi Ndletyana (49:25.886)

as finance minister and the appointment of Des van Rooyen, who no one knew as finance minister, a sensitive position that requires someone with credibility who's known by the market business and all that. And immediately the economy takes a hit.

And that just shows how reckless he is. And it sparks this popular upheaval, protests all over, 2015 December into 2016.

But that movement, which was...I forget the name of that campaign now. But then you have another campaign, Save South Africa campaign. The initial campaign following Des Van Rooyen's appointment, falters or kind of dissipates somehow because the initial grievance that sparked it was at rest. Pravin Gordhan comes in. So the gripe goes away.

But JZ remains a problem. Another one, Save South Africa, comes up. Following, soon after, Makhenkesi Stofile's funeral, where Sipo Pichane made a huge speech there saying one of the things that Stofile had said, was a leader of the ANC, premier in the Western Cape.

mean, the Eastern Cape, minister in government, as well as a previous UDF leader. So Sipho Pityana says, Stofile had said, you know, this is not what we fought for. We need to correct this thing. So that message, Sipho uses that message to galvanize opposition from within the ANC, within the support base of the ANC.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (51:43.188)

And so that campaign really picks up where the initial campaign had left off. Involved ANC people, ANC networks, it was not seen just as a sectional thing, but a widespread Save South Africa campaign. So the veterans joined that campaign.

So you have a popular upheaval against Jacob Zuma. And Zuma can see this obviously. And he can see people are baying for his head because of all the problems that he has been creating. And he's now playing his last card to make sure that whoever succeeds him as ANC president is someone close to him. And so he favours his ex-wife. His calculation is that Nkosasana would not agree to the father of a kid, four kids, going to prison. He overlooks previous allies that he had promised…So he goes for personal relations. He has very strong faith in personal relations.

But other ANC people are realising that, hey, hey, hey, if Nkosasana wins as ANC president, we will most likely, people are going to see, the electorate out there is going to see her presidency as a continuation of the Zuma presidency. And then in 2019, we're going to take even more pounding at the polls.

One of them flips who had been a previous supporter of JZ, Didi Mabuza, who was a chairperson of Mpumalanga and premier at the time. He flips, says now, and he had reason to flip because he was guilty of so many bad…

Mcebisi Ndletyana (53:57.114)

…things there. So he didn't want to have to answer to a president from the opposition, you know, who was going to try and make a name for himself or herself by going against corrupt people, including him. So Didi decides that he's going to get himself a president, influence the president so that he's appointed into a position within the centre of power so that he can use that position to make sure that he's not prosecuted.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (54:25.059)

He was close to Zuma and had used that proximity to block any prostitution against him. So he's going to use the same strategy now. So he really does that.

Nkosasana is not elected. Cyril instead, mainly because of the extra votes that Didi Mabuza had provided. And so DT also makes sure that he becomes deputy president and uses that proximity then or that location within the centre of power to ward off any talk of him being prosecuted. And did he really manage to avert or to evade prosecution throughout up until he passed on.

So it's only after Zuma lost influence in the presidency of the party or within the party circles, now that he was no longer the president, people could go at him. So that is why really immediately after the conference in 2019, in January 2018, they started going for him. The first meeting was to get rid of him. They decided to take a decision. But he tries to maneuver, trying to buy time, hoping that something might happen. But they are determined that he must go. And that's how he finally goes on Valentine's Day, the 14th of February. So Valentine's Day was not good for Jay-Z. He doesn't want to go, but they say if you don't go, we'll fire you. And if you get dismissed as president, that has an impact on your presidential perks…

Chris Steyn (56:08.642)

Professor, I just want to fast forward to today. Were you surprised when Mr Zuma made a political comeback with MKP?

Mcebisi Ndletyana (56:22.305)

I wasn't surprised. I wasn't surprised, particularly because he…was unhappy to be kicked out of there…. And unhappy also at how the Zondo Commission had proceeded and felt that he was being blamed for everything, which was true because many other people who also came out in the Zondo Commission, but he thought that thing had been brought down just to him. So he didn't disapprove, he was unhappy with that.

And so he was bitter. And bitter at Cyril, particularly because Zuma thinks that the president can do anything, getting rid of legal charges, which is what he had done. The law doesn't matter. If you're president, you have omnipotent powers to do whatever you wanted, which was what he did. So he felt Cyril could do that. When Cyril didn't do that, instead let loose the… State institutions and the law onto him, Zuma felt this was unfair.

So this was personal. He had some vendetta against him. It was not that Zuma was on the wrong, it was Cyril with the vendetta against him. So he was eager to get back to Cyril, at Cyril rather. So when this opportunity idea was presented to him to form a party, he did that. One, to avenge what he felt was unjust treatment. And secondly, he knew he had a base in KZN. You know, he just revived that base. We know what became of that in the 2024 election. The party nationally enjoys 14% or what, and it's the largest in KZN, around 44% or what, somewhere in the 40s but it's the largest party.

But the MKP couldn't escape Zuma's personality because JZ believed in personalised rule. So he's formed the party in his own image. It's very chaotic, there are no rules, he's in charge of everything.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (58:44.147)

…things are done by instinct, not well thought out. And also because it has attracted people like him, people who are chased by the law, who are unscrupulous individuals. So they also do their own things when they are found out…and he's 84, he can't run a party, he can't be involved in making all the decisions. So it's not a surprise that things are as chaotic in the party as they are now.

But it's also a reflection of Zuma. This is exactly how Zuma is. He believes in personalised rule. It's chaotic, doesn't follow. It does what you want. It doesn't follow rules. Act on instinct. And so there's no predictability. There's no process. Things happen, can happen anytime.

So MKP is what it is because it's a patron-based party. It's a reflection of the individual. And that is why it is as chaotic as Zuma is.

Chris Steyn (59:52.502)

His party is expected to do very well in the local government elections. What do you think?

Mcebisi Ndletyana (59:59.79)

Yes, that's very true, particularly in KZN. I wouldn't give it a big chance outside of KZN. The 2024 elections has already shown how that party resonates, how popular it is in that part of the world. It follows that in the local elections now, it will do better there partly because the ANC is not doing well. The ANC has never really managed to consolidate itself there. They don't have elected provincial leaders. They've had interim leaders for a while now whom they've had to fire and bring others because they can't really revive the structures of the parties there.

But MK has also had its own problems. The instability.

So some people have a different view of the party. But it's not just the party that attracts people, it's the personality that attracts. Personal charisma, personal adoration, affection towards Zuma. Zuma has charisma. And people believe in these big men. Big men thing is a big South African thing. Malema. Holomisa…Now you have Gayton McKenzie. These are patron-based parties. They're charisma…

People don't have trust anymore in the institutions because they believe that the institutions are indifferent to them. Because the institutions act on the basis of citizenship, on some cold rules, really treat people equally this and that. So they don't feel that there's a guarantee that the institution will be responsive to your plight because there is no close bond, strong bond that obligates the institution to act.

But if you vote for your own person, like a McKenzie-Coloured folks, you have this ethnic nationalism. With Zuma as well, Zuma, it's populism.

He pretends to be///

Mcebisi Ndletyana (01:02:15.236)

…down with the people, speak their language, he validates them, makes fun of himself. So when they see Zuma, they see themselves as one of us. So the charisma, populism and the Zulu thing is one of our own, which strengthens the idea that he is one of our own. You know, the true representative of the ANC in KZN, which is what he's been saying, that Cyril’s ANC is not the real ANC. I represent the real ANC.

So there's that competition of which is the authentic ANC and Zuma seems to be winning that argument, side….

But now that idea is kind of in doubt because he's ill. So he doesn't campaign. If he doesn't campaign, that's a problem because only him can campaign for the party.

He's brought in his son now as one of the deputy presidents because he believes in blood. Blood ties more than anything else for Zuma. Comradeship, this and that, no he has no trust in that. You have to be blood for him to trust you that he will protect you.

So if he doesn't campaign, visibility, the party will take a knock. And what should worry them even more is that if Zuma is not there for a while, the administration of the party is going to flounder because he is in charge and he wants to control everything. And because you don't have an elected structure, a proper structure in the party, elected leaders. So people tend to go to Zuma straight. They don't go…They are there because of their personal relationship with Zuma. I mean, it's really a patron-client kind of organisation. You are there at the favour of the leader. You don't recognise anyone else. You go to the leader and plead your case there. So without him there taking those kinds of decisions, other leaders will think they're entitled to a privation of their positions, but they will not get recognised by other members because they only recognize Zuma. So you're going to have a real chaos.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (01:04:44.319)

Real, real, chaos in that place. Yeah.

Chris Steyn (01:04:48.984)

So you're saying that MKP won't survive if Mr Zuma were not around?

Mcebisi Ndletyana (01:04:56.969)

If Zuma dies, the party dies. Or when Zuma dies, the party dies.

Chris Steyn (01:05:04.91)

Thank you, Professor, for speaking to BizNews about the Zuma Effect. I'm Chris Steyn.

Mcebisi Ndletyana (01:05:11.531)

Thank you. Thank you very much, Chris.

The Zuma Effect: the plots and the power plays | Prof. Mcebisi Ndletyana