Several hours before he reluctantly bit the bullet, it was a sure bet as any that Jacob Zuma was fully and finally into ‘Zexit’ – an obvious contraction of the words ‘Zuma’s exit.’ He was irretrievably and locked on the tipping point of his political power, and there remained no manoeuvring room for the famously ‘teflon president.’ When he blustered earlier on state television that he preferred a gradual sign-out, and that he was yet to be told by his party what he’d done wrong and be convinced on why he was being dizzyingly hustled towards the exit, you could see too well it just that: an empty bluster by a dazed and bamboozled but effectively conquered warrior.
Even in his much-touted rejoinder to the African National Congress (ANC) ultimatum for him to immediately resign the presidency, Zuma strutted all the way with defiance and buckled to pressure only in the closing lines of his late night address. “I do not fear exiting political office, however I have asked the party to articulate my transgressions … I fear neither motion of no confidence nor impeachment,” he had said, adding with momentary recourse to his native Zulu that he was not being stubborn but only wanted to exit power constitutionally.
But then came the inevitable punch, only this time out of the blue: “I have come to the decision to resign as president with immediate effect. Even though I disagree with the decision of the leadership of my organisation, I have always been a disciplined member of the ANC… As I leave, I will continue to serve the people of South Africa as well as the ANC, the organisation I have served all of my life,” he concluded.
Zuma had in an earlier media outing on Wednesday suggested he wasn’t in haste to oblige the ANC, which gave him only till the final hours of that day to quit or face a no-confidence motion in parliament the following Thursday. The ANC crunch line signposted an intended political fratricide of sorts, because opposition members in the South African parliament had before then proposed a no-confidence vote on the embattled leader to hold February 22nd. That the ruling party wanted the vote brought forward indicated its utter satiation and impatience with lingering incumbency of Mr. Zuma as president.
But the embattled ruler, before his late night exit Wednesday, had pouted at the ruling party’s effort to oust him. “It was very unfair to me that this issue is raised,” he said in an unscheduled live TV interview on SABC, adding: “Nobody has ever provided the reasons. Nobody is saying what I have done.” He also argued that ANC had not followed its own stated procedures in trying to unseat him. “I need to be furnished on what I’ve done. What is this hurry?” he queried.
You needed no arcane insight, however, to see even at that point that scandal-drenched Zuma was as it were an expired president inexorably going down the garbage bin of history, never mind the appearance of his fighting to ease out of power on his own terms. Actually, he isn’t unlikely to shortly swap the forfeited gilded terraces of power with the cold slabs of prison cells, in an ongoing judicial clampdown to make him answer for sundry corruption indictments that dogged his ill-fated presidency. In a sign that the net was already closing in even before his exit last week, officers from South African anti-graft police squad stung-raided the premises of long-term friends and business associates of Mr. Zuma, the Guptas, who have been at the centre of scandals swirling around him.
Although the ex-president had puffed and wafted about his rights and due process for his exit from power, it wasn’t that he had a scant chance of political survival anyhow. The ruling ANC, which controls the South African parliament and at whose pleasure Zuma had held the presidency for nine years, flagrantly withdrew the platform last week by asking him to resign at once or face up to an immediate no-confidence vote in parliament. True, he had survived quite a handful of no-confidence votes in his presidency – many of those in very recent years, his survival until now was strictly by reason of a cultic support from ANC members, which had frustrated protest votes by opposition parliamentarians. But now without the support of the ruling ANC, Zuma didn’t stand the chance of a nylon fabric in Hell to overcome another no-confidence vote.
We could, of course, ask why the ANC was so keen as at last week to see the back of Zuma. And following is a rough attempt at answering. Since the change in ANC leadership hierarchy last December that brought in Cyril Ramaphosa as party chief, Zuma who had backed the candidature of his ex-wife for the job effectively lost strategic hold on the party. But in South Africa, the party, and not the individual, is the government.
Also, besides the serial court-affirmed graft charges for which the ex-president had become much of a public ridicule, he had become a liability that the ruling party could ill afford with the impending general election in 2019. In other words, ANC needed to harshly cut out the Zuma cancer, to enhance its electoral appeal and chances in the forthcoming poll.
The lesson for political players everywhere to learn from the Zuma saga – more particularly for our purposes here, those in Nigeria – is that their relevance in the scheme of power is to the sheer extent of the electoral appeal they hold with voters. It is such appeal that motivates sponsoring party platforms. Where electoral appeal is hazarded, the political actor becomes a liability marked for purgation by the party platform. Conversely, electoral appeal is a sure safety net for a typical political actor to be sought and courted by party platforms.
But nothing enhances a politician’s electoral appeal more than the policies and programmes he sponsors that could better the lot of citizens whose votes he needs to get into, or remain in office. Many would argue, for instance, that besides the many corruption allegations against Zuma, his next biggest undoing was that there was little value added to the life of the average South African in all of his nine years in the saddle. Nigerian politicians must know that similar factors would come into play in the 2019 general election in this country.
Now that Zuma has bit the political dust in his home country, we could ask Imo State Governor Rochas Okorocha what he plans to do with the controversial N520million statue of the ex-South African president strutting the skyline of Owerri, the state capital. Recall that the statue was unveiled during a two-day semi official visit to Imo by Zuma in October, last year, during which he also picked the Imo Merit Award and as well the traditional title of ‘Ochiagha Imo.’
In throwback defence of the Zuma statue while facing down criticisms of his appointment of kid sister, Mrs. Ogechi Ololo, as Happiness commissioner in December 2017, the governor insisted that Zuma deserved the controversial honour. A statement by the Imo government had said: “The criticisms that greeted (the) Zuma statue were all anchored on corruption allegations against the South African President. Yet, the fact remains the man is still the president of that country. He has neither been sentenced to imprisonment nor impeached as president following these corruption claims.”
That was only in December, last year. What will Okorocha say now, and what will e do with the Zuma statue?
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