XPost: soc.culture.south-africa, za.politics, za.misc   
   XPost: soc.history, soc.culture.indian   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   This article is the best summary of the history of government in South   
   Africa for the last nine years I have yet seen.   
      
   If you are outside South Africa, this may be all you need to know.   
      
   If you are South African, you need to know at least this.   
      
      
   In the Ruins of the House of Zupta   
      
       Susan Booysen 15 Feb 2018 07:39 (South Africa)   
      
   The largely unspoken trump card in the turn against Zuma was the   
   inconvenient but incontrovertible truth that Zuma’s ongoing presence   
   in leading government would in all probability lose the 2019 elections   
   for the ANC.   
      
   The House of Zupta is in ruins. Two of its last vestiges tumbled this   
   week. As Jacob Zuma was forced into resignation from the Presidency of   
   South Africa, the Brothers Gupta and a host of associates were   
   arrested, charged and brought before court.   
      
   The events brought to an end an unprecedented and embarrassing era in   
   South African politics. Even as questions remain about exactly how   
   pristine the new holders of political power in South Africa are, it is   
   a certainty: the House of Zupta has fallen.   
      
   Nothing about the cracking and crumbling of the Zupta edifice was   
   easy, fast or guaranteed.   
      
   It was to have been the heart of a kingdom that would prosper off the   
   riches of the South African state. The Zuptas inhabited this house   
   with abandon. Jacob Z constructed an elaborate safety net to cover the   
   network’s operations of siphoning state funds into private coffers,   
   linked directly and indirectly to the joint Gupta-Zuma political   
   dynasty. Zuma ensured that core investigative and prosecutorial   
   institutions were infiltrated – their task was to forestall and stall   
   complaints, investigations and charges. To back this up, endless   
   streams of public funds provided access to expert legal   
   representation.   
      
   Zuma’s construction of his bastion of hijacked state funds started   
   early, taking shape in his first term in office (2009-2014),   
   flourished and then spun out of control from as early as 2012. By the   
   time of the ANC’s 2012 Mangaung conference the Guptas knew the result   
   of the ANC elections well in advance of any formalisation. The Guptas   
   aided Zuma in every aspect of the project, including in guiding the   
   appointment of puppet Cabinet ministers who would service the grand   
   Zupta project of pilfering and banal enrichment in exchange for   
   sidekicks’ small-fry benefits such as trips to Dubai.   
      
   The Zupta alliance, extending deep into the South African state, had   
   become brazen. All their actions signalled that they knew they had the   
   power. It was a parallel system of government.   
      
   They controlled the king of the castle, who, in the arguments of   
   Ronnie Kasrils, was an expert seeking out potential benefactors to   
   help him realise the life that he thought he was entitled to. In the   
   Guptas, Zuma had found the perfect match. Of course, the Zuma clan’s   
   pursuit of riches was not limited to tapping into the Gupta networks   
   exclusively. There were (or are) other families too, besides multiple   
   underworld links that have surfaced.   
      
   This kingdom of political and financial extravagance was supposed to   
   have lasted forever; Zuma’s ANC – a faction that was cultivated into   
   political dominance – was supposed to have endured until “Jesus comes   
   again”.   
      
   The cracks widened, most tangibly in December 2015 when Zuma plunged   
   into the replacement of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene with Des van   
   Rooyen, all on the Guptas’ instigation if not prescription. The   
   landscape started changing and a story unfolded of growing public   
   scrutiny, investigative journalists’ relentless pursuit of leads and   
   then, the #GuptaLeaks. The tide was changing, even if for the time   
   being the activities of pilferage and looting with the Zuptas as   
   beneficiaries continued.   
      
   Further turning points that helped destroy the House of Zupta included   
   Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report and the Constitutional   
   Court’s “breach of the Constitution” ruling on Zuma and his Nkandla   
   bastion. Opposition parties’ and civic organisations’ use of the   
   courts of South Africa to force accountability, which the factional   
   Zumaist ANC could not muster, helped to consolidate the gains. Next,   
   structures in the ANC started dissenting, foremost among them the   
   veterans. Gradually, ANC members and branches also started rebelling   
   across provinces beyond the Premier League and KwaZulu-Natal.   
      
   A Cyril Ramaphosa team had started working on building an intra-ANC   
   defeat-Zuma alliance soon after Ramaphosa’s serendipitous ascension   
   into the ANC deputy presidency in 2012. Kgalema Motlanthe stood on the   
   verge of defeat in the ANC presidential race and refused to enter as a   
   compromise deputy presidential candidate on the Zuma slate. As   
   contentious and complicit in many respects as this Ramaphosa move was   
   (and will remain for the foreseeable future), he accepted the ANC and   
   South African deputy presidencies. This was the beachhead to defeat   
   the Zupta regime.   
      
   The House of Zupta had become entrenched so firmly that defeat   
   appeared close to impossible. Zuma had envisaged it as the empire on   
   which the sun would never set. The Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma candidacy   
   for the ANC’s Nasrec 2017 elections was supposed to be the warrantee   
   of never-ending control. To win power, the Ramaphosa alliance would   
   need the support of many of the Zumaists. Compromise with the   
   compromised became one of the rules of the game to collapse pillars of   
   Zuptaism.   
      
   Foundations started collapsing under the “weight” of the slim 179-vote   
   majority in the Nasrec presidential elections. This was the turning   
   point that might so easily not have materialised. There was the   
   over-confidence that made a substantive batch of North West and Free   
   State branches and regions overstep the boundaries of legitimate   
   conference preparations. Court rulings disqualified these delegates   
   from Nasrec participation. A 3,000-strong NDZ caucus meeting as Nasrec   
   took off made the NDZ disciples believe that they could sacrifice the   
   contested branches; these were “a drop in the ocean”, they argued.   
   Even more, victory was certain, they prophesised. The DD   
   Mabuza-Mpumalanga “unity” ticket might have helped, to some unknown   
   extent, but might not even have been definitive.   
      
   Despite this milestone of Ramaphosa’s Nasrec victory, the House of   
   Zupta was standing. The Zumaists reckoned they could still safeguard   
   power until 2019. It would, they thought, give enough time to secure   
   the family silver of nuclear deals, and milking the economy generally   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)