Former president Jacob Zuma has been planting in the minds of the ANC membership and society a proposition that President Cyril Ramaphosa is a corrupt man.
What this attack seeks to achieve, only Zuma can answer, yet in this life things do not happen without a reason.
Should this proposition be taken seriously, or should it be rejected as a nonsensical
diatribe of a man scrambling for political attention fully aware his political shelf life has expired?
Could it be that those at the helm of the Jacob Zuma Foundation, known to be die-hard adherents of the radical economic transformation project, may be fuelling an ad hominem fallacy attack on Ramaphosa?
Could this be done with the desire to plant a seed in the minds of the gullible that Zuma was unfairly treated – and that the leadership of Ramaphosa is corrupt, and should be ended?
What else can explain why the foundation’s spokesperson, Mzwanele Manyi, is so paranoid about misrepresenting Zuma’s title, wrongly addressing him at every turn as “his excellency president Zuma”, when in fact this is not his title?
How then can these preceding pieces of thoughts help us understand the hatred Zuma holds for Ramaphosa?
But it is not far-fetched to surmise that politics might have something to do with it.
We know it was Ramaphosa who ended Zuma’s tenure as president in 2017, replacing him after a series of allegations of State Capture were levelled against him, and previously, the Nkandlagate scandal.
The Zondo commission implicated Zuma in the malfeasance and corruption involving the Gupta brothers, and how the family gained a foothold in government’s finances, and in the process weakening the governing and accounting structures geared towards protecting the fiscus from a runaway looting spree that ensued under Zuma’s watch.
While on the other hand, Ramaphosa has been projected as a Mr Clean, but is slow in taking action coupled with a myriad of weaknesses in his administration.
He has been accused of unwisely keeping in his cabinet Zuma acolytes, including Lindiwe Sisulu, now minister of tourism, and David Mahlobo, deputy minister of sanitation, among others.
Additionally, many have wondered why he has kept Bheki Cele in the police portfolio, known for his limited ability in policing and intelligence – and also linked to police tender irregularities while he served as a police commissioner.
But it would be the Phala Phala farm saga that would burst Ramaphosa’s political standing to smithereens, diminishing his political stature in the eyes of many South Africans.
However, in fairness to the man, the Phala Phala event should never qualify him as corrupt, although damaging, to the same extent to which Zuma was impugned and smudged by his nine years of presidency.
Zuma has assumed the character of a shrewd political fox.
He has also refused to take responsibility for his alleged nefarious criminal and corruption actions. Ramaphosa has now to bear the cross for concealing a lot about the Phala Phala aftermath.
Argument ad hominem is thrown at him, and he now suffers the ignominy of being described as “corrupt” by a man who faces charges of corruption and money laundering.
- Mdhlela is a freelance journalist, Anglican priest, ex-trade unionist and former publications editor of the SA Human Rights Commission journals
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