The preparation for the South African May 2024 election is progressing like a movie, and the special point of interest is that the emergence of an impromptu script. The main characters appear to even confuse the director; the suspense will likely make a box office material with viewers wondering what they would end up seeing in the grand finale of the episodes.
For now, the ruling ANC party’s presidential candidate naturally will tilt towards the incumbent president, Cyril Ramaphosa. However, events in the last few months make for missed heart beats as former president Jacob Zuma is causing quite a stir on the political terrain. The old, but tested war horse is battle-primed with things up his sleeves.
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced recently that the former president has been excluded from the May general elections. Commission boss, Mosotho Moepya told newsmen the objection which it received has been upheld. Although he did not give details, Zuma, who was nominated for election to the parliament by his new political platform, MK Party resolved to challenge the matter in court.
The objection likely stems from the fact that the former President resigned his presidential job in 2018 having been swept away in a gale of corruption charges. He was slammed a 15-year jail sentence in 2021 for refusing to testify before a panel probing financial sleaze under his presidential watch. This was due to the former president being in contempt of the highest court of the land. Being sent to prison for more than 12 months, Zuma became a political blight that is unfit to run for any elective office in the land or so the people thought until most recently, the court had a different position.
In exercising his powers, incumbent president, Ramaphosa, wittingly or otherwise remitted Zuma’s remaining 12 months. He was given a medical parole, which the court overturned at the time and served only three months. Technically, and under Section 47 (1e) of the Constitution, as argued in court, his jail term was reduced to three months. Legal fireworks is still being awaited, if it is still within the time before the elections in May, but for now and against IEC’s position, the court thinks nothing really stops Zuma from going to the parliament if he desires.
Although it is not yet over from a legal perspective, the MK Party turned things around against the IEC to the effect that its candidate, former president Zuma, can go to the National Assembly via the ballot box.
Zuma argues his right to vote and be voted for, and to even hold political power, and though there were counter arguments in court, the hindsight of what the Apartheid regime tried to do in limiting blacks from the political space lingered in the background. Section 47 (part of Chapter 2) of the Constitution on membership of the National Assembly also held sway in the court while the sitting lasted.
Possibility of return to office and consequences
At four score years and two, one would not exactly describe Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, born in April 1942, as a middle-aged fellow; he has clearly joined the class of elders in any society even much more in his native KwaZulu-Natal hierarchy.
Jailed for 10 years by the oppressive Apartheid regime, he was co-traveller with late Nelson Mandela, first president in a multi-racial, multi-party election, in Robben Island prison for plotting to overthrow the government. As if taking his share of the victory of the people over the racist perpetrators, he won the elections that brought him to power in 2009. In this respect, it will be fitting to say that he had paid his dues.
For nine years, Zuma reigned supreme as President of South Africa under the African National Congress (ANC) the ruling party which forced him out of the seat in 2018. It would also be safe to say that he got his wages, a more than commensurate share for his pains at fighting a national cause.
He was quoted as saying, in the days during the Constitutional court measures against him, that he was not afraid of anything that may result from the investigations that ended in incurring contempt of court. ‘I do not fear being arrested, I do not fear being convicted, nor do I fear being incarcerated. I joined the struggle against the racist apartheid government and the unjust oppression of black people by whites in the country at a very young age.’ That was an easy and well-known card to play to whip up the undying sentiment of racism that held the nation bound for long. This vantage may well have lost its value for him under the circumstance.
Contempt of court or conviction for alleged corruption
Be that as it may, it is appropriate to ask whether the 15 months jail for contempt takes the place of concluding the proceedings that was initiated against the former president for corruption issues while in office. Would it be taken that the nation does not have younger candidates that are competent to run for political offices in the land? Is it safe to conclude that the ANC template, which produced Zuma in the first place, for running the highest office in the land, is cast in Mold of gerontocracy, where government is ruled by the elderly?
What does Zuma want, and did he forget anything in the Presidential office, if he is still gunning for that position? The unfolding events in the days ahead will tell a lot in the politics of the nation.
