In this file photograph taken on April 21, 2009, South Africa's ruling party leader Jacob Zuma waves at a press conference in Johannesburg.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma has enjoyed significant success since his long-delayed, on-off, corruption trial got underway in 2021.
Now he wants to have his political career reborn outside of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
Earlier in December, Zuma announced that he would no longer support the ANC at the polls, a major election due in April 2024 in which the ANC faces the biggest test yet to retain control of the country’s governance and some major provinces, including the Zulu homeland of KwaZulu-Natal.
Instead, said Zuma, he would support a newly-formed political entity called uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation) which was and still is the name of the ANC’s armed wing, in which Zuma was once a senior figure.
The ANC says the name belongs to it and has issued a cease-and-desist demand over its use by the new formation. It is just not a new party and battle over the name. It is also a tactic to incite the ANC to a duel.
Zuma claimed that under President Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC had sold out its revolutionary history and that the ‘party of Nelson Mandela’ needed to be “saved from the outside”.
In an announcement made on December 16, National Reconciliation Day, Zuma vowed: “The new people’s war starts from today. The only crucial difference is that instead of the bullet, this time we will use the ballot.”
Fatally weakening
The emergence of a ‘political party’ using the name for the ANC’s armed wing, dubbed MK for short, is a direct challenge to the ANC and a bid by Zuma to take ownership of the party’s ‘liberation credentials’, thereby to not only oppose the ANC at the hustings but perhaps assist in fatally weakening its grip on power.
It came 16 years after Zuma’s then lead lawyer, Kemp J Kemp, told the High Court in Durban that Zuma would utilise his now infamous ‘Stalingrad strategy’ to “fight the state in every street, in every house and every room.” That looks to be the pattern in politics too.
Zuma's return to politics follows his continual battles to delay or even destroy a corruption case facing him.
Zuma has employed numerous peripheral legal moves which have all failed but which have resulted in delays such that no testimony has yet been led in a case which has its roots in alleged kickbacks on a late 1990s arms deal.
Dubbed the ‘Stalingrad strategy’, recalling the protracted battle of World War 2, Zuma has attempted to yield not a single step, but rather has launched several ancillary legal actions, all aimed at delaying matters for as long as possible.
But while Zuma has achieved many successes in delaying what would be the ‘next logical step’ in any other similar case, mainly due to attacking the judge for alleged bias – that judge having recused himself and been replaced – and the lead state prosecutor Billy Downer.
Supreme Court
He appealed to overturn the Court’s invalidation of his private prosecution against prosecutor Downer on December 13 but was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA). He also has a pending application to remove Downer from the prosecution team.
Zuma’s antipathy to Downer appearing for the state stems from the 2005/6 successfully prosecution by Downer of Zuma’s former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, who received a 15-year-sentence for the same crimes and charges as Zuma is now facing.
Even though the highest court has ruled on the matter, Zuma’s legal team has pushed on with his private prosecution – the SCA, in its recent one-line ruling, pointing out that these have “no hope of success”.
Zuma’s case is set for resumption in early 2024 and it is expected he will seek to delay further even though courts have already issued stinging rulings on abuse of the legal system by Zuma.
Already, however, there are calls for any new conviction of Zuma not to lead to jail time, due, to Zuma’s “contribution to the defeat of apartheid” and to his “service to South Africa,” according to his supporters.
He will turn 82 in April – and he has argued in court before of a pre-existing ‘medical condition’.
When Zuma was first jailed in July 2021, hundreds of deaths and mass rioting and looting erupted, mainly in Zuma’s Zulu home province of KwaZulu-Natal, which cost the country many billions in looted and destroyed shopping centres and infrastructure such as cell towers and electrical sub-stations.
Zuma riots
Ramaphosa’s government acknowledged that it was caught unprepared by the ‘Zuma riots’, but insists that will not be allowed to happen again, should the former liberation fighter be sent to jail for corruption.
The year 2023 marked the fifth since his case was reinstated. He is accused of abusing his powers to hollow out both the specialist investigation unit aimed at reining in corruption, along with the national prosecution authority, leading to the charges against him being dropped.
Legal action eventually led to those charges being reinstated. Zuma retains a fiercely loyal support base, especially among Zulu traditionalists, who may be political capital in 2024.
