Zuma’s going to kill the spineless ANC

There is one thing you can say about the ANC without fear of contradiction: these guys don’t listen.

They have, consistently, been treated shabbily by their former president, Jacob Zuma, but they remain deferential, even obsequious, towards him.

Which then brings up the question: how can such a dunderhead of an organisation possibly respond positively to the many messages the people of SA have sent it that it must reform and pull up its socks?

Given its inability over the years to act courageously and decisively against Zuma, and its propensity to aid and abet him in all his malfeasance, it is fair to say Zuma is going to whittle down and kill the ANC.

Last week — with yet another public relations victory for Zuma — underlined just what a great job he is doing to achieve this goal.

Last July numerous people begged the party to demonstrate that the law is supreme in SA, and that it applies to every single one of us.

They said if Zuma must go back to prison to finish his sentence for contempt of court there should be no special dispensation for him.

Yet, the party and its spineless leaders thought they knew best.

Justice minister Ronald Lamola, purportedly one of the brightest and most ethical sparks in the party at the moment, and his advisers went rootling about deep in the back cabinets of the law and found a way, in the most convoluted and embarrassing manner possible, for Zuma to be released from jail on remission.

We were told that a remission programme to address prison overcrowding had been devised.

Why was this suddenly a priority in August 2023 when prisons had been overcrowded for months and years before that?

Under this remissions process, urgently and enthusiastically signed into law by President Cyril “New Dawn” Ramaphosa, almost 9,500 inmates were released from prison and placed under correctional supervision.

The most well-known among them, Zuma, was admitted to the Estcourt Correctional Centre and released in less than two hours “in order to alleviate prison overcrowding”.

“The law has taken its course with regard to the former president Zuma,” Lamola told us.

Puh-leeze, man. If you believe that “the law has taken its course” in this case then, well, bless you, my friend.

You are truly a great believer in miracles.

This was Zuma’s second great escape in just two years.

Back in 2021 he was unlawfully released by his friend Arthur Fraser, the former spy boss in Zuma’s time who was by then correctional services boss under Ramaphosa.

Zuma has gone on to illustrate to Ramaphosa and his advisers what klutzes they are.

On Thursday, in another one of the many frivolous court cases he has brought to delay the start of the 19-year-old arms deal corruption case against him, he appeared before the Gauteng high court for yet another postponement of his private prosecution of Ramaphosa.

He complained bitterly that Ramaphosa has never appeared in court.

“We opened a case against the president and, ever since we started these proceedings, he has never come to court.

“This shows that this is not the country we fought for because they force us to come to court, come dark or blue, that is what the law says,” Zuma whined.

This was the man for whom Ramaphosa had released nearly 10,000 convicts last August.

If there is a man for whom the law has been prodded, bent and broken, then it is Zuma.

Yet, in his mind, he is the victim.

Who has done the undermining and breaking of the law? It is the ANC.

The party has known since exile days that Zuma is a compromised man. Throughout the past 30 years it has consistently fished him out of trouble.

Remember when Nelson Mandela gifted him a cool R1m in 2005 to go and solve his debt problems?

Remember when the ANC disbanded the Scorpions unit just so he wouldn’t go to jail?

Remember when the ANC lied about the Nkandla swimming pool, miraculously designating it a fire pool, to shield the man from accountability?

He is so used to being protected by the ANC that he is now coming to kill it — and he knows that its leaders are so spineless they will let him do it.

This week is exactly four months to the day since he announced that he would campaign for a party that wants to take the ANC out, and the best ANC deputy president Paul Mashatile could say this week was that Zuma’s decision to not resign is “strange”.

Strange? If this was any other member of the party they would have been kicked out in a trice.

Yet, the ANC cannot find the cojones to expel the man.

He is going to kill the ANC.

By its behaviour, the ANC tells us it thinks it deserves to be killed by him.

HeraldLIVE