Zuma Must Heed Kathrada’s Voice of Reason

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 3, 2016
E-mail: [email protected]

Long before the Constitutional Court handed down its damning decision on the theft-prone profligacy of the Supreme Leader of the African National Congress (NDC), at least that is how he well appears to envisage himself, revered national leaders of global renown like Archbishop Desmond Tutu had called for the prompt resignation of President Jacob Zuma. Now an even more politically hefty personality in the country has added his voice to those calling for Mr. Zuma to stand down (See “Anti-Apartheid Veteran Urges Zuma to Resign” Al-Jazeera / Ghanaweb.com 3/3/16).

I know two of his former associates who may be having that proverbial time of their lives. Going primarily by what has so far been dished out into the public domain by the global media, the 73-year-old successor to President Thabo Mbeki – actually, there was an interim leader before Mr. Zuma – is not by any measure one who ought to have been elected the preeminent citizen of Mr. Nelson R. Mandela’s South Africa. In the past, Mr. Zuma has been furiously dogged by allegations of bribery and corruption and influence peddling. He was once even charged with raping the girlfriend of his own daughter who had gone to spend the night at the Zuma residence.

Mr. Zuma would later claim in court that the sexual intercourse with his daughter’s then-best friend had been perfectly consensual; he would be let off the hook, against the vehement protestations of the victim, her lawyers and supporters and sympathizers. But what made this case all the more remarkable was not the shocking luridness of it all, but rather the fact that his victim was also a clinically certified Aids patient. Her alleged rapist had not used any prophylactic or condom. He would also claim not to have been the least bit concerned about the fact that he could well have contracted the deadly Aids virus.

The two men who may well be having a jolly time with the increasingly deafening calls for Zuma’s resignation are, of course, the rabidly anti-white racist radical African nationalist Mr. Julius Malema, a onetime staunch ally of Mr. Zuma and the latter’s protégé who had a falling out with Mr. Zuma over Mr. Malema’s intemperate tirades and virulently hostile language and provocative public pronouncements against white South Africans. Not surprisingly, Mr. Malema would earn the loyalty and enjoy the unwavering friendship and support of Mrs. Winnie Mandela. Today, Mr. Malema is the founder and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party. He may be aptly envisaged to be the political avatar of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, at least the latter-day Mugabe.

The Nkandla Scandal was so viciously and selfishly insensitive that it may well have made some frontline or diehard advocates and champions of the erstwhile Apartheid political culture feel divinely vindicated. It involves the inexcusably criminal misappropriation of public funds for private and invidious ethnic self-glorification. Mr. Zuma would be accused of having deliberately and unconscionably diverted public development dole for the renovation and massive expansion of his private residence in his Nkandla homeland and a quite remarkable number of homes of his neighbors and clansmen and women. If you did not either belong to his ethnic group or neighborhood, then you might as well literally go chew grass.

We must also not lose sight of the vicious hostility visited on the distinguished Black South African woman legal expert appointed to independently probe the Nkandla Scandal. The man is also allegedly so thoroughgoing corrupt that like a Swazi royal chieftain, he takes a new wife just about every couple of years and keeps producing children by women young enough to be his own daughters and children tender in age enough to be his own grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. In sum, there is almost nothing redemptive or attractive about the man, except being used as a prime butt of jokes by standup comedians.

Now Mr. Ahmed Kathrada has also called for the immediate resignation of President Zuma. The call was reportedly contained in a letter published on the website of the foundation created in Mr. Kathrada’s name. The Robben Island graduate’s voice carries considerable weight with the front-row leaders of the ANC because Mr. Kathrada was present when the oldest Black-African political party on the primeval continent was transformed into the fairly formidable anti-racist and anti-settler-colonial fighting force that this originally civil liberties and rights protest organization later became.

Mr. Kathrada was one of the Rivonia Eight convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor on Robben Island in 1964. The Rivonia Revolutionaries would have been sentenced to death if the South African judicial system had had capital punishment on its books, as it were. At 86 years old, Mr. Kathrada has witnessed how real humiliation and powerlessness looks and feels like.

The other man who may be gaily having the time of his life is former President Thabo Mbeki, the man whose widely perceived short-shrift treatment of a grassroots-hatched Mr. Zuma precipitated the painful political debacle of the former. At each fateful turn and/or twist, it is the imperative necessity to preserving the integrity of the African National Congress, as a revolutionary vehicle for a post-Apartheid society of multiracial and multicultural equality before the law, that ought to matter more than all else. And it is for this reason why Mr. Kathrada’s call for his immediate resignation cannot be indefinitely postponed or cavalierly ignored by President Jacob Zuma.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is a former Honorary Member of the African National Congress (ANC), New York City (CCNY of CUNY) Chapter.

*You may visit his blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs