Mbete is a confirmed Zuma stooge – and by extension a servant of the Guptas. Her position on our runaway train of a president has always been pinned somewhere between reverent respect and a poorly hidden desire to be the next Mrs Zuma. Why on Earth would Mbete turn on her Honoured Chief?
I suspect searching for an answer to that question would be futile. I don’t think the Guptas’ favourite president would have so much as blinked when the announcement of the secret ballot came, because it was most likely on his orders. So, why would Zuma give the MPs in his party such a good opportunity to be rid of him?
This time there is, I deduce, an excellent answer hidden just beyond the obvious. Plenty of people have the same suspicion that I do – that Zuma gave the unprecedented secret ballot the thumbs-up and go-ahead – but generally they seem to ascribe that move to a calculated gamble on the part of our chuckling Head of State. I disagree, and indeed I seriously doubt that Zuma considered it much of a gamble.
The vote of no confidence, while not exactly in Zuma’s favour, did not present him with the sort of grave threat some opposition parties and political analysts have suggested. I’ll discuss both possible results to show how it could be seen as a win-win situation for out least liked President: his future had it succeeded, and his future after a failure, with the second being far more likely and indeed being what happened.
Now, what would have happened, had the vote somehow pulled in enough of the incredibly weak ANC conscience to remove Zuma from the office he has so badly abused? Firstly, Zuma would be firmly removed from the Presidency. Maybe he would have tried to kick the matter to the Constitutional Court in one of his trademark delaying actions, but let us suppose he would go for the sneakier option and stoically accept his removal. What would be step two?
South Africa must have a President, so with Zuma gone, Speaker Mbete would temporarily step up to the Top Job. Since Mbete is a solid Zuma stooge, that would at best be exactly the same as Zuma staying in office – at worst, Mbete would take the opportunity to go entirely off the rails in the knowledge that she no longer be President by the time the opposition parties get the courts to step in. Step three can go one of two ways, depending on Parliament.
If Parliament fails to select a new President, it would be dissolved and an emergency general election held as soon as possible. There is 0 chance of the ANC allowing that. If there is an election right now – particularly right after Zuma is kicked out – the ANC would not get an outright majority. Not a single ANC MP cares so much for South Africa that they would risk their party losing power: thus, the ANC majority in Parliament would accept the candidate that the dominant Zuma faction brings.
Thus, with the first way step 3 could go being near impossible, it would inevitable go the other way. As mentioned, the ANC would install whichever candidate the dominant Zuma faction insists on: what that means is that Jacob Zuma would still functionally control the President and by extension the Cabinet. The new President could, arguably, just re-install the exact same Cabinet and get back to Gupta business-as-usual.
Why would Zuma still consider this a win? It would be less ideal than Zuma himself staying in, yes, and might hamper certain Zupta schemes a bit; however, there is no real downside. Zuma is guaranteed to be able to install a puppet of his choosing in his lost office, which means that he can still do everything he could when in the office himself. The loss of face would not phase Zuma – he is not in the Presidency to build a personality cult, which is why he doesn’t bother grandstanding much. Zuma as President has an expiry date in 2019, and has no political future to worry about. With his patronage network safely preserved, Zuma would not be much hurt by expulsion from office. In short, the Zupta rot would survive a successful no confidence vote.
How about the other case, a failed no confidence vote by secret ballot? The failure of a normal no confidence vote results in no real consequence – the opposition heckles a bit about conscience, the ANC heckles back about futile gestures. What about a vote by secret ballot? With such a failure, opposition heckling has less room to manoeuvre in, but that’s not the real selling point. The only real threat to Zuma’s plans before 2019 is internal dissent – should his faction somehow lose their grip, the Zupta rot might actually be partially dislodged and the patronage network damaged. The “voting with conscience” has both proven that the Zuma grip is still very strong, and left very little space for ANC dissenters to try and push for any internal attempts to remove Zuma.
A last thought, having shown why Zuma had nothing to fear: it is likely that the ANC is terribly scared of Zuma falling. Why? Well, remember that wild U-turn Gwede Mantashe pulled on the subject of the Midnight Cabinet Reshuffle? One moment, Mantashe was foaming at the mouth about the way the Guptas handed the shuffled list to Zuma like some sort of imperial commandment – the next, Mantashe was suddenly throwing his weight about to try to put out the fires of dissent that such brazen corruption had lit. What could have scared the spine out of a top SACP/ANC politician so completely?
The ANC has a very, very mixed history. Carefully forgotten are things like landmines, car bombs, dead children, human rights abuses and massive massacres of the Inkatha by the ANC and vice versa. Zuma, as head of intelligence for the ANC, would have been aware of most of the ANC’s dirty secrets – the ones that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard about, and the ones that ANC leaders buried deep for fear of the repercussions among their own members. It seems almost inconceivable that Zuma doesn’t have access to secrets that could do terrible damage to the ANC, and many of the Struggle veterans in the NEC.
Zuma has shown us his conscience – lack of one, to be more accurate. Confronted with his abandonment of his Constitutional responsibilities, Zuma gave us a chuckle and a casual “oops, sorry”. Would he lose any sleep over blackmailing the entire ANC? The rest of us might never know, but what we have seen from him so far suggest no scruples that might give him pause. The signs are all there. Like some sort of abusive relationship, the ANC complains every time Zuma abuses their trust… only to go right back to defending him the moment anyone else suggests they split up.
Zuma gave the thumbs-up for the secret ballot in the recent no confidence vote – that seems a given. It was, as shown, quite possible that he considered it a win-win (not necessarily a win-win for the ANC, but that’s not Zuma’s problem). Aside from the win-win nature of it, Zuma was probably very sure that he would be safe; for all we know, he might even have arranged for a few “turncoats” to vote against him to take the pressure off the ANC on the subject of “voting with their conscience”.
Whatever the case may be, the secret ballot no confidence vote was clearly not the right pesticide to purge the Zupta rot – we need something stronger and much more thorough.
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