It is up to the Minister of Police to prove that South Africa's prison system has the courage and integrity to treat Zuma like a convict instead of a Cinderella-turned-princes, writes Ismail Mahomed.
Ten minutes before the clock struck midnight Jacob Zuma's foundation tweeted that the disgraced former president was on his way to hand himself over to the police to serve his 15-month imprisonment term.
While it may have been music to many ears, in reality it is just a modern adaptation of the Cinderella story in which Cinderella tries to rush back home from the ball before her crystal chariot turns into a pumpkin. On her way home, she loses her crystal slipper. The following morning, a charming prince searches through the town for the maiden with the dainty foot who danced with him at the ball. And as soon as he finds Cinderella, who was jailed-birdied all her life by her ugly sisters, her life changes and they live happily ever after.
Unfortunately, Zuma neither has dainty feet, nor can he dance as gracefully as Cinderella. His consort prince, Carl Niehaus, who danced for him all of this past week at Nkandla, is hardly charming and not very bright either. Also, there'll be no happy ending for the nation.
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Zuma has cold dancing feet, the kind of feet described in the New King James Version of the Bible: "For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood (Proverbs 1:16)." This man who, for the best part of his presidency, put his foot in his mouth and danced footloose for almost a decade, has had one foot in his homestead in Nkandla and the other in the South African courts.
It came as a huge surprise to him last week when South Africa's apex court, the Constitutional Court, ruled that it was game over for the man who played the part of Puss in Boots for far too long. It was time for this awful pussy to be in jail for 15 months. The fat pussy who has been growing old, eating from the trough like a pig, was not going to go down with a quiet miaauw.
Super-spreader event at Nkandla
He tried to roar like a lion. He stirred up a dangerous ball at his Nkandla homestead. He made hordes of people who had turned up at his unmasked ball vulnerable to the merciless coronavirus. He made them dance to the threats of war and bloodshed, stirred up by his consort prince, Niehaus, whose daytime job is to be the court jester.
Niehaus acted in total violation of the National Disaster Management Act. He should also joined Zuma on his way to hand himself over for breaking the Covid-19 lockdown rule book. Any deaths that will come from the super-spreader ball at Nkandla should fall squarely on the shoulders of this prime evil number one.
Like Zuma who leeched off the public purse for far too long, Niehaus also has a notorious reputation for leeching off the resources of others to constantly reinvent himself as a relevant veteran of the struggle. Jail-birdied with Zuma, Niehaus will have no difficulty swindling favours from the police guards to swop his and Zuma's prison menu of pap en boontjies for chicken wings and chakalaka.
Zuma's convicted fraudster friend, Schabir Shaik, managed to get out of jail after serving less than three years of his 15-year sentence. It is quite likely that Jacob Zuma read Shaik's survival notes this past week, before he embarked on his drive to jail last night. In 2009, Shaik was released from prison on medical parole amid reports that he was dying. Eleven years later, he is still very much alive and so elusive, that not even the coronavirus has been able to find him. All the chances are that Zuma too will be out of prison, long before his 15 month-term ends.
ANC infighting
Zuma's imprisonment is an albatross on the neck of an ANC that has become fragile and divided. For as long as he is in jail, the infighting will cut deeper wedges. It is a cost that a party which has to gear up for elections, can ill afford.
It's a further liability for the party that a number of those who toyi-toyied at Nkandla last week, without their face masks and without regularly sanitising their hands or social distancing, might not be around for if the coronavirus was at Nkandla too, dancing to Niehaus' battle tune.
The ANC has, for more than a decade, been shooting itself in the foot by covering up and defending Zuma. Now the party lines are divided between those who have bloodstained feet and walked with Zuma to the Gupta compound to steal billions from the public coffers, and those who were not part of the inner circle and invited to drink chai with the Gupta brothers. They are the ones with the small feet who hardly have any real following.
Nobody could have expressed it better than Leonardo da Vinci when he said that the human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and art. Nobody knows that better than Zuma. Even with both his feet in jail, the danger game for South Africa is far from over. Zuma might not have had the artsy feet of a stately statesman in Parliament, but he certainly has the engineering feet of a cunning criminal.
Zuma is going to be a superstar in prison
Zuma, more than likely, walked into his prison cell with inmates cheering his arrival. He is going to be a superstar in prison. He will receive special meals and special favours. For as long as he eats, his fellow inmates and prison wardens will eat too. A buffalo is a communal animal. It seldom grazes alone. It finds strength in its herd and Zuma is an excellent herdsman — a numbers gatherer!
Zuma's imprisonment is far from an act of justice. It is simply an indication that our country has a judicial system that can work when it wants too. A working judicial system that metes out justice is one thing. A police and prison system which has to carry out justice is an entirely different thing. Our democracy has failed several times because our policing and prison system is, far too often, not on the same side of justice.
Zuma's jailbird chronicles will be a litmus test if anything is going to change. It is up to the Minister of Police to prove that South Africa's prison system has the courage and integrity to treat Zuma, not like the Cinderella-turned-princess who was once again wearing the crystal slipper the night after the ball, but like the convict under whose feet South Africa's dignity has been trampled on.
If there is any redemption to be shown it should not be about Jacob Zuma stepping out of prison remorsefully, wanting to wash the nation's feet. It should really be about the ANC drawing up a roster of its members, like Jesse Duarte, Baleka Mbete, Mac Maharaj, Ace Magashule, Angelina Motshekga and the hordes of others, to visit Zuma in his prison cell to wash his feet. It is them who used their political privilege to make him the foolish jailbird that he now is.
And while they take their turns on the roster, they might as well take Niehaus with them too to keep Zuma company for the next 15 months.
For the past 27 years, the ANC has shown that every good chief in the ANC needs either a corrupt charou or an idiotic mlungu to survive. With Zuma's erstwhile charou friends, the Guptas, safely counting their billions in Dubai, the ANC might as well send in their last remaining mlungu, Niehaus, who might be able to bribe the prison wardens to lend him and Zuma a few pennies from their petty cash bins to buy ciggies to while away the time in prison.
- Ismail Mahomed is a multi-award-winning arts administrator and playwright. He was the director of the National Arts Festival and former CEO of the Market Theatre Foundation. He currently serves as the director of the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He writes extensively in his personal capacity on matters about the arts, civil society and social change.
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