Adriaan Basson - Enemy of the People: How Jacob Zuma stole South Africa and how the people fought back

T o write a book of history in real time, while editing a digital publication, requires enormous discipline and sacrifices from our loved ones and friends.

To Cecile, Janetha, Michiel, Schalk and Lukas, thank you for giving up your husbands and dads to allow them to write this book. We hope that it will in some way contribute to the growth and improvement of our beloved South Africa. We love you dearly.

To our Media24 bosses, Andreij Horn and Charlene Beukes, thank you for allowing us to write this book while the news was breaking. Your support has been invaluable.

Eugene Ashton and Jeremy Boraine from Jonathan Ball Publishers just wouldnt let go of the idea of this book. After many glasses of good red wine, they finally convinced us to tackle this mammoth task. We guess you were right, gents.

To our colleagues at News24 and HuffPost SA, thank you for supporting us throughout the research and writing process. It gave us huge comfort knowing the show would go on without us being around.

We have drawn heavily on the work of South Africas amazing crop of investigative, political and news journalists. If it werent for you, we would have been in much deeper shit by now.

And we, as journalists, couldnt have told these stories if it werent for the brave and selfless whistle-blowers in government, the ANC and the private sector. You are the unsung heroes of the Zuma years.

To Mandy Rossouw, who pushed over the first domino that ultimately led to exposing our naked emperor: may your soul rest in peace.

Adriaan Basson & Pieter du Toit

CHAPTER 1

Hell never become president. He doesnt have enough support and he cannot do the job. Besides, the womens lobby
will never allow it.

Naledi Pandor and Thoko Didiza, on Jacob Zuma,
during a Gauteng ANC media networking dinner, Sunnyside Park Hotel, 2006

C omrades! Comrades! Can the comrades at the front please sit down, so the comrades at the back can see?

Dren Nupen, the petite, white-haired elections officer from the EleXions Agency the company that managed the leadership election at the ANCs 52nd national conference in Polokwane in December 2007 was standing on an empty stage, struggling to make herself heard above the din in the hot, stuffy delegates marquee. She almost willed them into submission because she could simply not be heard over the chanting, singing and dancing. The conference was held in the grounds of the former University of the North in Mankweng, during the humid rainy season, and was dominated by factional battles. The build-up to the gathering had been acrimonious, with the different camps planting disinformation, launching smear campaigns and using dirty tricks on each other. Thabo Mbeki was determined to succeed in securing a third term as leader, while the South African Communist Party (SACP), Congress of South African Trade Unions ( Cosatu) and the ANCs leagues coalesced around Jacob Zuma.

Zuma mustnt be allowed to win he will destroy the country, was the message from the Mbeki faction.

Mbeki cannot get another term he will become a dictator, was the rallying cry from the other side.

Most of the 4 000 delegates that Tuesday evening, 18 December 2007, were chanting Zu-ma! Zu-ma! with the emphasis on -ma thundering around the enclosed space. Many were holding up a section of City Press , with a picture of a singing Zuma underneath the headline What the Zumafesto holds. The outgoing National Executive Committee ( NEC) had vacated the stage and were sitting on the left-hand side of the giant tent. Mbeki sat in the front row, wearing a navy golf shirt and a tan sports jacket. He was surrounded by his kitchen cabinet, Mbhazima Shilowa, the loyal Gauteng premier and former Cosatu boss, Essop Pahad, Minister in the Presidency and Mbekis enforcer, his brother Aziz, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Mosiuoa Lekota, the Minister of Defence, who had been shouted down on the very first day of the conference. They were the people who told him what he wanted to hear: that he must stand for a third term as party leader, that Zuma cannot be allowed to win and that they had the numbers to ensure that.