Zuma: Democracy’s growing pain

Events in South African politics over the next few months will doubtless be pivotal in establishing who will succeed President Thabo Mbeki when his term of office expires in 2009. Invariably, the next president will come from the ranks of the African National Congress-led tripartite alliance.

Buoyant after his acquittal on rape charges, former Deputy-President Jacob Zuma remains a frontrunner for the presidency, enjoying the backing of various influential camps within the alliance.

While Mr Zuma has been acquitted of charges of raping his 31-year-old accuser, he has admitted to having had extra-marital sex with an HIV-positive woman, suggesting that having a post-coital shower would protect him from HIV-infection.

Remarkably, Mr Zuma at one point headed the government’s National Aids Council as well as its Moral Regeneration Movement.

Moreover, he has been implicated in corruption allegations flowing from the fraud and corruption trial (and conviction, currently pending appeal) of his financial backer Schabir Shaik, and faces graft charges himself.

It is fair to say that in many democracies a politician with such a track record of political scandal and poor judgment would no longer aspire to higher office.

Yet Mr Zuma, it seems, continues to harbour such aspirations, and has the enduring political support to pursue these.

Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, whose archdiocese falls within a Zuma stronghold, is quite right when he points out that a Zuma presidency would be detrimental to the “image of political leadership” in South Africa. It would also be an acute international embarrassment for the country.

The idea that Mr Zuma, despite his accumulation of political scandal, can still reasonably eye the presidency is a sign that South Africa’s democracy is still young and finding its way. As the principles of transparency and accountability—the pillars of a functioning democracy—take root, so will the likes of Mr Zuma be made to face the consequences of his conduct with much less spectacle than we are witnessing now.

To say so is not condescending. Some elected political leaders in thoroughly democratic Western Europe, for example, are by no means more admirable than the likes of Mr Zuma. Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faces graft charges of a magnitude that would make Mr Zuma’s travails seem positively frivolous. Recent lobbying scandals in the United States emphasise that corruption is rife even in “the greatest democracy in the world”.

However, in most older democracies, perpetrators of corruption have the propriety to resign their office once they have been exposed, not ill-advisedly claim it back while the shadow of a trial still looms over them.

Democracy, as Pope Benedict said in mid-May, is an effective means of “guaranteeing the future in a way worthy of man”. However, the pope cautioned that democracy relies on resolute civil institutions that can uphold a stable society. Such institutions would, of course, include the Church.

Democracy, the pope continued, also involves “the urgent need for tenacious, lasting and shared efforts to promote social justice.”

Mr Zuma’s persisting support can be partly explained by the expectation of many of his backers that he would serve the poor better than the Mbeki government.

This may well be so. Indeed, many who are now critical of Mr Zuma would concede that he might have been a good president.

However, by his actions, Mr Zuma has injuriously undermined the already fragile stability of our society. It would be in South Africa’s best interest, therefore, if Mr Zuma removed himself now from consideration for the presidency, and from the processes that will influence the appointment of a successor to Mr Mbeki.