Mbeki cleans up, Zuma faces charges

Jun 20th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

South African prosecutors are to bring corruption charges against Jacob Zuma, who was sacked as deputy president last week by Thabo Mbeki. The moves against Mr Zuma are the strongest signs yet that Africa’s leading nation is serious about fighting top-level corruption

SACKING his popular deputy was a tough decision, perhaps the toughest that President Thabo Mbeki has yet faced. But Mr Mbeki's bold action, last week, has at last encouraged South Africa's prosecutors to move against Jacob Zuma, who is accused of taking huge bribes from a businessman friend, Schabir Shaik. On Monday June 20th, the state prosecution authority said two criminal counts of corruption would be brought against Mr Zuma. Mr Shaik was sentenced to 15 years' jail earlier this month.

Sacking Mr Zuma was hard for Mr Mbeki because his deputy is a charismatic figure who remains highly popular in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and among the country’s powerful trade unions. Mr Zuma’s supporters admire him for his modest beginnings and his role in the struggle against the former white-supremacist apartheid regime—and many of them dismiss the corruption allegations as a conspiracy. The appointment in 1999 of Mr Zuma, a Zulu, helped to end years of violent clashes between the ANC and a rival for votes among the country’s black majority, the mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party. But in the end, the president told parliament last Tuesday, he had concluded that it was in the best interests of Mr Zuma himself, the government and “our young democratic system” to relieve him of his responsibilities.

The ANC—which has governed South Africa since democratic majority rule was introduced in 1994—has recently had its reputation tarnished by a number of scandals. It has fought back by promising to take a tough stand against corruption in public life. The case of Mr Zuma and his links to Mr Shaik has been the ANC’s biggest embarrassment and thus the biggest test of its determination to clean up.

Mr Shaik received his jail sentence for paying Mr Zuma 1.3m rand ($189,000) in return for advancing his business interests and for soliciting a bribe on Mr Zuma’s behalf from a French arms firm. Though the Scorpions, South Africa’s equivalent of the FBI, had said there appeared to be a case against Mr Zuma, prosecutors took their time in deciding to press formal charges against him. Protesting his innocence, Mr Zuma had resisted pressure to resign of his own accord, complaining of having to undergo “trial by media”. However, the judge in Mr Shaik’s case concluded that the relationship between the two men was “generally corrupt”.

The verdict against Mr Shaik was in itself a victory for those trying to root out top-level corruption in South Africa. But Mr Mbeki’s decision to kick out his number two, and the bringing of charges, are the most encouraging signals yet from sub-Saharan Africa’s leading nation that it is serious about combating graft. At a time when the rich world’s leaders are discussing a big rise in aid to poor African countries and forgiving their crippling debts, Mr Mbeki’s action was a timely response to those sceptics who argue that boosting aid is pointless because so much of it is embezzled by corrupt political elites. Had he not acted now to remove his deputy, he would have faced an awkward meeting with the rich donor countries’ leaders at next month’s Group of Eight summit in Scotland—and he would have had to leave a seriously tarnished Mr Zuma running the country in his absence.

The sacking of Mr Zuma came shortly after the ANC gave a warning to its parliamentarians that any of them found guilty of fraud in another scandal, concerning travel expenses, will also be fired. Earlier this year, Transparency International, a corruption-monitoring body, praised the South African government’s efforts to curb graft. Transparency International’s league table of corruption perceptions already rates South Africa as the least corrupt country in sub-Saharan Africa bar Botswana. But the country’s size, and the prominent role it takes in regional institutions such as the African Union, mean that its drive against graft will set a positive example to neighbouring countries with weaker governments.

Nonetheless, there is still plenty of scope for greater openness in South African politics. Worryingly, last month a court barred the Mail and Guardian, a leading weekly, from publishing an update on what is being called “Oilgate”. The newspaper alleges that public funds from a state-owned oil company ended up in ANC coffers via a private company, just before last year’s general election. Also last month, a court refused to let the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, an independent outfit, force the country’s four biggest political parties to disclose who their private donors were.

Though Mr Mbeki and the ANC easily won last year’s election, the recent rash of corruption allegations has come amid signs of public dissatisfaction at the government’s failure to deliver on its promises. Last month, there were riots over housing and poor local services. In a sign of strains within the ruling party, the premier of Western Cape province, appointed by Mr Mbeki, has just been defeated in elections for the ANC’s provincial leadership. Later this year or early next year, the party will have to defend its record in local elections.

Thus it will be important for the president and his party to put the bribery scandal quickly behind them. One of the most important issues now will be whom Mr Mbeki chooses to replace Mr Zuma as deputy president, and who the ANC eventually chooses as its second in command, a job Mr Zuma keeps, for now at least.

In his parliamentary speech last Tuesday, Mr Mbeki only said that a successor would be announced in due course. Among the leading contenders are the defence minister, Mosiuoa Lekota, and the foreign minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma (who is the sacked Mr Zuma’s former wife). Another possibility is the minerals and energy minister, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, whose husband, then a public prosecutor, said two years ago that there was prima facie evidence of corruption by Mr Zuma but not enough to guarantee a conviction. Now that Mr Zuma seems to have been ruled out of succeeding to the leadership, the choice of his replacement will be watched carefully for signs of which direction South Africa, and the region as a whole, will take in future.

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