Zuma Exposed

Description

ZUMA EXPOSED IS THE BOOK JACOB ZUMA DOES NOT WANT YOU TO READ.

From Schabir Shaik to The Spear, Jacob Zuma has been at the centre of controversy both before and after he became South Africa’s citizen number one. As president, he has seemingly lurched from one bad decision to another. This explosive, roller-coaster account traces the unravelling of a likeable but deeply flawed leader who came to power as victim, not visionary.

How did Zuma wriggle out of corruption charges to become president of the ANC and South Africa? Who provided him with the secret spy tapes that got him off the hook? And why did he appoint so many dubious characters to run key state institutions?

As Zuma desperately tries to cling to power, award-winning journalist Adriaan Basson answers these and other questions in this gripping look at the president’s dark side.

ADRIAAN BASSON is the assistant editor of City Press and the author of Finish & Klaar: Selebi’s Fall from Interpol to the Underworld. He is an award-winning investigative journalist who has received numerous prizes for journalistic excellence, including the Taco Kuiper and Mondi awards. In 2012, he won the CNN African Journalist of the year print award, for City Press’ exposés of Julius Malema’s financial affairs. Finish & Klaar was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award in 2011.

Title Page

Zuma Exposed

Adriaan Basson

JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS

JOHANNESBURG & CAPE TOWN

Dedication

To the brave and selfless whistleblowers who believe we can be better.

Contents

Contents

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Cast of Characters

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: Bad decisions

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part 2: Bad judgement

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Part 3: Bad leadership

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Annexures

1. Zuma’s Cabinet (2009)

2. David Wilson’s affidavit

3. ANC press statement on The Spear

4. Zuma Incorporated: the business associates

Picture Section

Acknowledgements

‘My capacity to be offended had been eroded cumulatively and decisively by Zuma’s conduct before he became president of the ANC and president of South Africa, and ever since.’

Professor Njabulo S Ndebele

City Press, 17 June 2012

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Cast of Characters

Cast of Characters

1. Jacob Zuma

President of the ANC and South Africa

2. Sizakele Khumalo

Zuma’s first wife

3. Nompumelelo Ntuli Zuma

Zuma’s fourth wife

4. Tobeka Madiba Zuma

Zuma’s fifth wife

5. Gloria Ngema Zuma

Zuma’s sixth wife

6. Sonono Khoza

Zuma’s lover and mother of his child

7. Duduzane Zuma

Zuma’s son and businessman

8. Duduzile Zuma

Zuma’s daughter and businesswoman

9. Khulubuse Zuma

Zuma’s nephew and businessman

10. Schabir Shaik

Zuma’s former financial adviser and convicted fraudster

11. Moe Shaik

Former head of the secret service in the Zuma administration

12. Jackie Selebi

Former police chief, convicted of corruption

13. Michael Hulley

Zuma’s private attorney and presidential legal adviser

14. Ajay Gupta

Friend of Zuma family and head of Gupta family’s business empire

15. Atul Gupta

Head of Gupta family’s Sahara computer business and New Age newspaper

16. Rajesh Gupta

Youngest Gupta brother and business partner of Duduzane Zuma

17. Jagdish Parekh

Head of the Gupta family business and shareholder in Imperial Crown Trading

18. Richard Mdluli

Suspended head of crime intelligence in Zuma’s administration, accused of murder and corruption

19. Bheki Cele

Former chief of police who was fired by Zuma

20. Menzi Simelane

Chief prosecutor in the Zuma administration, declared unfit for his job

21. Nomgcobo Jiba

Appointed by Zuma to act as chief prosecutor

22. Lawrence Mrwebi

Head of Commercial Crime Prosecutions, appointed by Zuma

23. Willem Heath

Former head of the Special Investigating Unit and adviser to Zuma

24. Mokotedi Mpshe

Former acting prosecutions head who withdrew Zuma’s corruption charges

25. Billy Downer

Zuma’s corruption prosecutor

26. Julius Malema

Former president of the ANC Youth League, axed by Zuma’s ANC

27. Blade Nzimande

General secretary of the South African Communist Party and member of Zuma’s Cabinet

28. Gwede Mantashe

Secretary general of Zuma’s ANC

29. Jeff Radebe

Zuma’s Justice Minister

30. Nathi Mthethwa

Zuma’s Minister of Police

31. Siyabonga Cwele

Zuma’s Minister of State Security

32. Mac Maharaj

Zuma’s spokesperson and former Minister of Transport

33. Kgalema Motlanthe

Deputy president of the ANC and South Africa

34. Tokyo Sexwale

Zuma’s Minister of Housing and businessman

35. Brett Murray

Artist and creator of The Spear

36. Moss Phakoe

Assassinated former ANC councillor and union leader

Preface

Preface

Unlike his predecessors, Jacob Zuma didn’t rise to power with a Big Idea. Nelson Mandela had the Rainbow Nation and Thabo Mbeki had the African Renaissance. Zuma had nothing but a corruption trial.

Yes, he was a jovial man of the people with an intuitive common touch, and of course his legacy in the ANC goes much deeper than what happened after the arrest of Schabir Shaik, but Zuma didn’t become president of the ANC and of South Africa because of his clear vision or fine policies.

He became president because enough ANC branch members believed he was the victim of a conspiracy concocted by Mbeki, the first generation of BEE millionaires and the Scorpions. Mbeki’s so-called 1996 Class Project was also rejected by the left, who saw him as a cold-blooded capitalist with scant regard for the plight of workers and communists. Although Zuma had no track record in the union movement, he became a Trojan horse for desperate interest groups with bleak futures. And so they pushed a compromised man to the front because he had nothing to lose and was the only ANC leader brave enough to put Mbeki, who was seeking a third term as ANC leader, in his place.

With the support of grassroots party leaders, the trade unions, the communists and the party’s youth league, Zuma toppled Mbeki in Polokwane in a turning-point moment for Africa’s oldest liberation movement.

Five years later, Zuma is at risk of being toppled himself by the same people – except for the communists – who put him into power. How did this happen so fast? Why are the same people who pledged to lay down their own lives for him now vying for his blood? Perhaps the answer can be found in a letter Nkululeko Mfecane, an Eastern Cape teacher, wrote to my newspaper, City Press, in July 2012:

I am writing this letter seeking help. I am also writing as one of the disgruntled Eastern Cape educators who has been working since January, and has not been paid a cent to date … The challenge we are facing in Eastern Cape has been going on since 2010. Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga was dispatched to deal with these issues.

Motshekga visited the province, established a task team to resolve everything that wasn’t working well and also to restore the province to where it belongs in terms of the standard of delivery the ANC said it expected.

The challenges were later elevated to President Jacob Zuma’s office after it was established they were too comprehensive for the minister’s liking and understanding. They needed, apparently, someone who could be more decisive.

The president came, set up his task team, listened to our challenges and promised to deal with them.

The province was later put under administration, meaning that all its functions would now be under the national government.

The embattled Eastern Cape education superintendent-general, Modidima Mannya, was fired amid SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) protests that saw the province obtaining a mere 54% matric pass rate last year.

In came Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi to try and resolve the challenges.

A deal was struck where we were told all ‘temporal’ educators had to report back for duty and that financial issues would be addressed.

He left and we were all relieved that finally the nightmare was a thing of the past – only for it to resurface just a few days later.

This is the reason why I do not trust the marriage between Cosatu, Sadtu and the ANC.

Nothing concrete ever seems to come of this. As an educator, I love this nation, I am a taxpayer and I voted ANC. But then again, I have a family to take care of.

I am on my knees asking you, City Press, to help us, not only as ‘temporal’ educators, but as South Africans. Also, please help the ANC to come to its senses and do the right thing for the learners.

They are facing a bleak future because of the incompetent cadres occupying top offices and because of our president, who doesn’t seem to know when to stand up and stamp his authority.

Instead he will say: ‘Let’s debate it.’ What is to be debated when the provincial administration is crumbling? How many people are leaving this province for better opportunities because of this incompetence?

Is it not one of the reasons why Western Cape Premier Helen Zille call us ‘refugees’?

With all this in mind, I don’t see myself voting ANC ever again.

I would rather suffer than give my vote to a populist politician who will emerge and promise us the world while being interested only in family and close friends.

Parents must also come to the party as this affects their children.

I am a young professional who is wise enough to know that crime does not pay – but do we need to go and steal to survive, despite having decent qualifications?

This reminds me of a newspaper headline after Zuma’s acquittal, which read ‘Living in Zumania’.

I never thought ‘living in Zumania’ was going to bring such low morale to public servants, let alone South Africans at large. It’s like a dark cloud is hanging over us.

We have indeed made a mistake voting in Zuma as president.

There are three things about Mfecane’s letter that struck me: firstly, that Zuma actually took the trouble to listen to the teachers’ complaints and promised to do something about them. Secondly, that despite ‘promising us the world’, Zuma did nothing about their situation besides encouraging debate. And thirdly, that Zuma was ‘interested only in family and close friends’.

Before and since his election as president, Zuma has been embroiled in a number of scandals – from bribery allegations to nepotism to sex scandals to protecting dirty policemen. His lack of a clear vision, his ineptitude at implementing policies and at leading in times of crisis are probably the closest we will get to reasons for his declining support.

Zuma’s struggle credentials and peacemaking efforts in KwaZulu-Natal are well documented and acknowledged. What I was interested in were those things that wouldn’t make his official biography or hagiography. This is a book about Zuma’s dark side: the things he has done that make people like Nkululeko Mfecane pick up their pens and state openly that voting for Zuma was a mistake.

Introduction

Introduction

‘Number one is desperate now. He will do anything to stay in power,’ says the man opposite me, sipping on his second cup of black coffee. He is an ANC man, a hard man, born and raised in the struggle. He is worried. Speaking about the decline of the movement he believes in with his whole heart doesn’t come easily. He is scared. I need to take out my cellphone battery when we meet. ‘Paranoia has set in at the highest levels. The amount of tapping going on is fucking crazy. All comrades now have two or three cellphones,’ he says in a hushed voice, frowning.

I don’t know if he’s telling the truth. I’ve seen the two, three cellphones when I meet sources in bars, restaurants or parking lots. There’s the official number, the unofficial off-the-record number and the deep-off-the-record number. I often make the joke that if all the people who believe they are being bugged are really being listened to, that leaves half of the rest of the population to do the tapping. It doesn’t matter if the paranoia is based on real evidence or perception. Perception is truth, and in the months leading up to the governing ANC’s 53rd national elective conference in Mangaung, paranoia has set in at an unprecedented level.

Comrades are scared about whom they speak to, where they eat or who they are seen with in public.

‘Try to come with a different car next time. Park on the other side of the building. And don’t call me on my official phone, ever,’ says the hard man. He’s just explained to me why, despite his flaws, Zuma should be re-elected at Mangaung. ‘This one-term shit will cause instability, not only in the ANC but in the whole country. If we start kicking people out after one term we will end up with a civil war, like the rest of Africa.’

Wow, what a reason to re-elect a party president, I think: to prevent civil war.

Hard man says that the ANC is acutely aware of Zuma’s flaws and will put a ‘ring of steel’ around him in his second term, which means he won’t be allowed to make important decisions unilaterally.

Another comrade, an ANC woman who has given most of her adult life to the party, says she’s advising her kids to go study abroad and get residency overseas. ‘Look what this man is doing,’ she says, with disdain for Zuma in her voice. ‘He only cares about himself and his family. This is banana republic stuff.’

It is a few months before Mangaung and President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is fighting the political battle of his life to stay in power. Although he had told journalist Moshoeshoe Monare in 2008 that he would ‘prefer to leave after one term’, Zuma later denied this, saying he would never say such a thing because it was up to the ANC to decide if he would serve one or two terms as president.

Five years after defeating Thabo Mbeki convincingly at Polokwane, Zuma was on the ropes, fighting fire after fire over his handling of the multiple crises in his administration. The party of Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela was, again, searching for its soul, which, according to loyal comrades and opponents of the ANC, had become corrupted.

Something was rotten in the state of Zuma.

While I was writing this book, the ANC in the Northern Cape elected a provincial executive. Four of the five members elected to lead the party in this province for the next five years were implicated in corruption or fraud scandals. The story did not make headlines, nor were there mass protests or national outrage over the election of four accused persons to lead the governing party in one of the poorest provinces it governs.

At about the same time my newspaper, City Press, was at the centre of a perfect storm following the publication of an artwork, by artist Brett Murray, titled The Spear. The painting, a parody of a famous poster of Lenin, showed Zuma with his genitals hanging out. The ANC and Zuma took us to court, organised mass protests against the Goodman Gallery (where the painting was being exhibited) and asked its members to boycott City Press – the first such call since the party came to power in 1994. Blade Nzimande, the Minister of Higher Education and Zuma’s strongest ally, called for the artwork to be destroyed.

Whenever I found myself drowning in confusion over the state of affairs in South Africa, I remembered the hard man’s words: ‘He will do anything to stay in power.’

In spite of all the scandals plaguing Zuma’s term in office, analysts predicted that, against all odds, he was set to secure a second term in office. Perhaps this had something to do with the ANC’s culture of not speaking out against power in public, with the party’s almost covert style of campaigning behind the scenes. Or perhaps it came down to one thing, the only thing Zuma’s foes and friends agree on – that he is a masterful strategist.

I am often reminded of the fact that Zuma ran ANC intelligence from the mid-1980s. ‘He knows everything about the party. He knows everybody’s dirt. A lot of people cannot afford for Zuma to start speaking,’ another ANC veteran tells me. This became a popular refrain during the time that Zuma, who is also affectionately called ‘Msholozi’ (from his clan name), was facing corruption charges relating to the R70 billion Arms Deal. Zuma’s suited strategists and grassroots supporters agreed: if this man starts to talk, he could take the party down. Such speculation was fuelled by Zuma himself, who told his supporters outside court that ‘one day’ he would reveal the identities of his persecutors.

Of course, Zuma’s power and grip over the ANC cannot be explained only by his knowing, metaphorically, where the bodies are buried. As president, Zuma made a number of telling appointments to crucial Cabinet positions, especially in the criminal justice cluster. In most of these cases, the appointees were Zuma loyalists. A significant number had, like Zuma, chequered pasts. I realised over time that Zuma surrounded himself with people who depended on his goodwill to stay in power and enjoy the fruits of the governing elite. They also depended on him turning a blind eye to the accusations, allegations, charges or rulings against them. Logically, these people weren’t always the best candidates for the job. Zuma’s appointments of people to lead state institutions like the police, the prosecuting authority and the intelligence services also created the inescapable impression that, ultimately, he was protecting himself.

It would be fair to say that, during the four years in which corruption charges were preferred against him, Zuma developed a paranoia about being prosecuted, convicted and jailed for taking money in return for political favours. A court had already found that he was part of a corrupt relationship with his former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik. Another court was to decide whether Zuma had accepted the money and benefits with a guilty mind. When the charges against him were dropped on the most dubious of legal grounds, Zuma had reason to be fearful.

He kept his friends close. Through Jeff Radebe (Minister of Justice), Nathi Mthethwa (Minister of Police) and Siyabonga Cwele (Minister of State Security), Zuma kept a tight grip on the criminal justice system. The three ministers, all from Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, are some of his closest allies in Cabinet and the ANC, and are viewed as crucial to his chances of securing a second ANC victory. Zuma protected them, even when Cwele’s wife was convicted of drug smuggling and Mthethwa was exposed as a beneficiary of a dodgy crime intelligence slush fund.

Six months before the Mangaung conference and three years into the Zuma presidency, the South African Police Service (SAPS), the police crime intelligence division, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) and the State Security Agency (SSA; both the domestic and foreign intelligence agencies) were all headed by acting appointees. These institutions, crucial to the government’s fight against crime and corruption, were rudderless, in disarray and barely surviving in an environment of fear and loathing.

It is impossible to divorce this sorry state of affairs from the ANC’s current power battles. Zuma knew that to win in Mangaung, he needed the support of his police and intelligence chiefs; all the better if he also had a sympathetic ear at the NPA. It was, after all, a former head of the NPA who almost spoiled the Polokwane party, in December 2007, when he announced during the conference that Zuma would face corruption charges in the new year. Despite a looming corruption case, Zuma went on to be elected as ANC leader. He never saw the inside of a courtroom to defend his innocence. The rest is history.

It is five years later, and Zuma is again running for the office of ANC president.

This book is not an objective analysis of everything Zuma has done since becoming president in May 2009. It is also not a biography. I am an investigative journalist, interested only in the truth. Naturally, when a person is elected president of my country, I follow his every move and his money and interrogate every decision he makes in order to navigate through the bullshit and spin that South African journalists are increasingly being fed. The book is a critical and probing look at how an affable, man-of-the-people leader became a bad president; how, in five