The prophecy of Jacob Zuma and friends

There you are one fine day marching through the woods at the head of a royal army, exhausted but elated. You have just won a great victory in the battle for your king and can look forward to a handsome reward, loot, slaves or whatever else confers honour in the universe you inhabit.

At a clearing in the forest, while still basking in the glow of these thoughts you chance upon three witches and frogs, human remains and other paraphernalia of witchery. You accept their praise and congratulation with the humility of a soldier, but amid their incantations and mumbled fortunetelling they say something very specific, that “you shall be king hereafter”.

Now you are humble but not without ambition. You have ideas about how the kingdom might be better ruled, how to collect more tax, how constant rebellion against the crown shall be dealt with, and the stuff. This witches prophecy is intriguing. It also presents you with a dilemma. The king is young, healthy, driven, capable of producing an assembly of heirs. How might you succeed him?

If you did things to make the environment more conducive for the prophecy to succeed, is it still a prophecy? Let’s say you killed the king and his entire line of succession and any other lord that might have a claim to the throne, leaving yourself as the only one qualified to “be king hereafter”, and fulfil the prophecy. Have you cheated? Is it the prophecy or your own actions that make you king?

It is an interesting question of philosophy and psychology - The self-fulfilling prophecy. First ,there is a funny, almost irony in the revelations that the investigation into Zuma and his pals has effectively been internationalised.

Zuma is by all means and evidence a man with a sense of humour, always ready to laugh off the most serious allegations, from ‘Nkaaaaand-la’ to Cabinet reshuffles. The infuriating Zuma has become the definitive image of an entire era of misrule.

Here it is: Zuma has spent the last few years borrowing heavily from banks that are not known to build him kingdom ‘Nkaaaaaand-la’, and also painting himself as the victim of western imperialist mischief. In this telling Zuma is the radical African liberator whose hard work to free his people from poverty and inequality has spooked The Imperial Power, and they are now doing everything and using everyone they can to undermine his rule and destroy the ANC because he and the ANC are one and the same thing.

The real irony here is that Zuma may have unwittingly willed his own troubles. Only the outcome will not be a heroic new struggle led by the man from Nkandla, but a broad spectrum international criminal investigation that will tarnish the ANC, diminish South Africa’s standing, pressure down our fragile government institution to breaking point and shame the legacy of Tambo, Mandela, and a thousand other who paid dearly with their lives for the founding of the democratic republic on which Zuma has pissed for eight full years.

Here, unlike other countries, we simply gather our things and leave when we don’t like playing by the rules we signed up to. Ultimately, whether we like it or not, our institutions of politics have failed us. The Imperialists may hold out the last hope to arrest and reverse the tide, or perhaps even return the estimated R7 billion that’s found its way to Dubai for our president’s unofficial retirement fund. Wuold it be better if the charges were led by the Hawks, the SAPS, and SARS? I say yes. But they won’t, so South Africa will take its help from whoever is willing to help.