Well, that didn't take long, did it? The African National Conference delegates who had gathered in Polokwane were barely settled back into their posh suburban homes near Cape Town and Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, Port Elizabeth and Pietermaritzberg and all points in between when the news came across the wires. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has decided that there is enough evidence to pursue corruption charges against their new ANC president, Jacob Zuma.
So what does this mean? Well, it certainly means that the NPA has a peculiar sense of timing. Seeing how it is difficult to believe that new evidence has emerged in the last few days, or even weeks, why now? Why did this not happen weeks ago? Why not on the eve of the Polokwane meeting? Or why not until after the new year?
And the question lingering as a subtext to all of this is what role did Thabo Mbeki have, if any in all of these machinations? The historical adjective most applied to Mbeki is “Machiavellian.” Is this an example of Mbeki's Machiavellian nature? What about Zuma? Has he accumulated enough power to have been able to manipulate the system to forestall charges until after his election as party presidency? To bring the charges early enough that he can beat them (assuming he can beat them — far from a foregone conclusion) early enough to allow him to recover for the national election that he surely sees as being in his pocket in 2009?
And what of the popular response? Among his most ardent followers the charges will almost surely appear to be a plot from the Mbeki faction and further evidence that their man is not only a hero, but also a martyr. In an odd way, these charges may well bolster Zuma's populist bona fides even as they confirm his own Machiavellian streak among his opponents. But surely the charges will also arouse worry, maybe even shame, among some rank and file members of the still-divided ANC.
On more than one occasion I have tried to temper the importance of Polokwane by noting that with a long time to go before the 2009 elections there was lot of political football to be played. The possibility that the NPA would bring charges always ranked high among the potential tectonic shifts. Who suspected that the plates would crumple so soon after Zuma's ascension to the party's top post? So much for Zuma's hoped-for new era of good feelings in ANC politics.
