Jacob Zuma has never been found guilty of a single charge of corruption, and yet he is constantly vilified in “the media” as corrupt. According to The Citizen’s editor, the origin of this misconception dates back to 2005, when Zuma’s financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, found himself on the dock for charges of being enormously generous and issuing 783 payments amounting to R4,072,499.85, tying both men in time to the infamous arms deal—democratic South Africa’s first and greatest act of industrial-scale larceny.
Were Shaik and Zuma locked in a mutually filthy pas-de-deux. Not exactly, Motale reminds us. TV and newspaper reports conflated Judge Hillary Squires’ ruling with the prosecution’s contention that there was a “generally corrupt relationship”. That statement, likely to be etched on the largest memorial stone in Zuma’s fifty
Jacob Zuma has never been found guilty of a single charge of corruption, and yet he is constantly vilified in “the media” as corrupt. According to The Citizen’s editor, the origin of this misconception dates back to 2005, when Zuma’s financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, found himself on the dock for charges of being enormously generous and issuing 783 payments amounting to R4,072,499.85, tying both men in time tothe infamous arms deal—democratic South Africa’s first and greatest act of industrial-scale larceny.
If at this point you feel like you need to take a shower, consider the actual wording of the ruling, which Motale insists few of his “colleagues” bothered to read:
“If Zuma could not repay money, how else could he do so than by providing the help of his name and political office as and when it was asked, particularly in the field of government contracted work, which is what Shaik was hoping to benefit from. And Shaik must have foreseen and, by inference, did foresee, that if he made these payments, Zuma would respond in that way (…) It seems an inescapable conclusion that he embarked on this never-ending series of payments when he realised the extent of Zuma’s indebtedness.”
But never mind that: it was all a smear campaign, a media-driven takedown, a hatchet job perpetrated against an otherwise stand-up chap.
The fallout was extreme: Zuma was famously fired by then president Thabo Mbeki, leading up to the nasty process that culminated in Zuma‘s triumph at the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) 52nd National Congress in 2007, and the year later in Zuma’s faction jettisoning the sitting president of South Africa.
According to Motale, the press—himself very much included—found the uneducated, five-wifed Zuma distasteful because he mispronounced “Hennessy”, and he and his crew collective hounded the ANC’s new president into ignominy despite his obvious benevolence.
If Zuma is bad, insists Motale, it’s because we wrote him bad. “In many ways the president has turned out to be quite measured, reserved and tolerant of us,” Motale reminds us. “Better than we may have expected him to be, and more forgiving than I would probably have been in the same position.”
ref:dailymaverick
