Zuma’s Zombies - the sycophants who paid a high price for their blind political loyalty to Msholozi

The shattered careers, lives and reputations that have come to rest in the global political junkyard form a heap as high as it is wide and it reeks of the consequences of blind loyalty.

The latest casualty in former president Jacob Zuma’s long rampage to kleptocracy is John Hlophe, who now faces old age without the substantial lifelong salary, medical aid and state vehicle that judges usually get.

Hlophe (65) will be the first Judge President in democratic South Africa to be impeached after he was found guilty of gross misconduct in April 2021 by a Judicial Conduct Tribunal.

And all this because he tried to influence two Constitutional Court justices in 2008 in a corruption and fraud case related to Zuma.

As countries go, South Africa ranks up there with some of the worst examples – alongside the US, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines and Argentina – when it comes to the attack on freedom and accountability. The slide towards “electoral autocracy” is a growing trend. Behold India.

Similar to the continuing shitshow that Donald Trump has dragged steaming into US politics, Zuma has chewed up, spat out and abandoned graveyards of kamikaze friends, loyalists and protectors.

The careers of many of the bottom feeders in this Darwinian hierarchical pyramid scheme can never be salvaged. Sure, some have recycled themselves, some have repented and others have been forced to seek work elsewhere in the world, but many are decomposing in the dustbin of history.

As for the good guys, the whistle-blowers who were targeted by Zuma’s minions, some had their lives abruptly and brutally terminated, others remain in hiding, though a few have slowly begun to rebuild their lives.

Brave red flag raisers in the private sector, where global accounting, auditing and ­consulting firms were too busy admiring the emperor’s new clothes while benefiting handsomely from fortunes diverted from the poor, also found their reputations trashed.

How deep is your love

At present, several ANC members implicated in State Capture remain vocally active in the party and continue to receive salaries with benefits. The ANC’s integrity commission has been grappling with what to do with “heavyweights” who continue to represent the face of government in public.

The most odious of them include former minister of State Security David Mahlobo; as well as former Gauteng premier and minister of water affairs and sanitation Nomvula Mokonyane; former minister of finance, home affairs, etc, Malusi Gigaba; Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe; and at least 87 others.

Former suave minister of health and frontrunner for deputy president Zweli Mkhize, a Zuma ally, resigned in August 2021 and is facing criminal prosecution for Covid procurement corruption related to the Digital Vibes scandal.

The ANC Integrity Commission has recommended that 100 members implicated in wrongdoing be removed from the ANC’s elec­toral list.

Mpumalanga strongman and former deputy president David Mabuza, who switched sides from supporting Zuma to batting for victor Cyril Ramaphosa in 2017, re­signed in 2023. “The Cat”, as he called himself for his ability to survive attacks by his opponents, is known as an agile manipulator of the law.

Mabuza now faces a life-and-death battle in a long-running civil trial, brought by conservationist Fred Daniel, that is related to serial assassinations, shocking endemic corruption and land reform theft.

Human shields

Like Hlophe, former State Security Agency (SSA) official and Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane displayed remarkable resolve in protecting Zuma’s shadow state as well as the regional empires of his allies, former Free State premier Ace Magashule and MEC for agriculture Mosebenzi Zwane.

Mkhwebane was removed from office after a costly and lengthy Section 194 parliamentary inquiry, whose findings were voted on in Parliament. Weaponising the Office of the Public Protector, Mkhwebane targeted Zuma’s political opponents, ringing up huge legal bills while suffering defeat after defeat in the courts as the rule of law was tested.

Now an EFF MP, she has since been informed she has forfeited her R10-million gratuity that comes with serving out a contract without blemish.

Both Hlophe and Mkhwebane, and their tragic legacies, are now for the history books on how a middle-aged democracy was almost collapsed through their collusion.

Their version of what happened differs markedly. The main thrust of it is that a conspiracy had led to a political “witch-hunt” and that they are the heroes while the rest are traitors to the “revolution”.

This, 30 years into ANC governance. It’s the kind of paranoia and delusion that also drives men like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump.

As noted in 2023, John Mandlakayise Hlophe had carried high hopes from KwaDukuza via Cambridge to head the Western Cape Division of the High Court.

But almost from the get-go, Hlophe brought emotionally driven political theatre to his leadership and became embroiled in myriad legal challenges. He has been accused of assault, both verbal and physical, of colleagues in the key division he headed.

Beside Hlophe was his legal representative, Barnabas Xulu, the man who established the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust, which helped to fund Zuma’s defence during his rape trial in 2006.

In that instance his accuser, Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, was subjected to vitriolic public abuse after her revelations and before her untimely death in 2016 at the age of 41.

Xulu has since lost his luxury home in KwaZulu-Natal and his Porsche, never mind his reputation as the Legal Practice Council investigates him for misconduct. Xulu is in a deep pit of debt, owing the state R20-million in fees he should not have been paid.

Advocate Dali Mpofu has played a key role in representing Zuma and Mkhwebane, and has driven the judiciary to issue a directive that waffling, gaslighting as well as im­­provised riffing, in future, would not be allowed in court. Mpofu also complained that his R13-million legal bill to the Public Protector was “peanuts” considering his weight and expertise, mostly in the Stalingrad defence method.

The wheels on the bus

Key institutions and departments targeted in the Zumification of the state included the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), the South African Revenue Service (SARS), the South African Police Service (SAPS), the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the Office of the Public Protector, the Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence, the SSA, crime and military intelligence, Correctional Services, Home Affairs, Health, Education, Water and Sanitation, Public Works, the National Treasury, the judiciary and Parliament itself.

Added extras were those institutions at devolved levels, including provincial and municipal, with the contagion gradually seeping into almost all layers of life, from corporate boardrooms to taxi ranks and construction sites.

A series of directors of public prosecutions (DPPs), including Advocate Mokotedi Mpshe, who dropped Zuma’s corruption charges in 2009 in the swirl of the weaponisation of the “spy tapes” (secret recordings of conversations between the then head of the Scorpions, Leonard McCarthy, and NPA head Bulelani Ngcuka), stood tall for Zuma.

As late as 2018, Mpshe still insisted he did not err in dropping the charges when the courts overturned his argument, finding he was wrong in law to stop the prosecution.

Prosecutors Menzi Simelane, Nomgcobo Jiba, Lawrence Mrwebi, Ron Mncwabe, Raymond Mathenjwa, Sello Maema (NPA North West deputy head), Marshall Mokgatle (Pretoria head of the Specialised Commercial Crime Unit), Anthony Mosing (senior deputy director of public prosecutions), Mahlubi Ntlakaza (former acting Johannesburg DPP), Moipone Noko (former North West DPP) and Shaun Abrahams (former deputy national DPP) all took a fall.

In April 2019, a commission of inquiry into their fitness to hold office chaired by retired Constitutional Court Judge Yvonne Mokgoro found that decisions by Jiba and Mwrebi brought the NPA into disrepute.

Noko, who was found to have manipulated charges while she served in KwaZulu-Natal, was transferred to North West before resigning when informed she faced an inquiry.

Mncwabe and Mathenjwa were appointed as DPPs in North West and Mpumalanga by Zuma a week before he left office in 2018, but lost their jobs when Ramaphosa revoked this.

Abrahams, another Zuma peak State Capture appointee to head the NPA, recently found himself appearing in Lesotho in a high-profile case, but the country’s Chief Justice Sakoane Sakoane has barred him from further participation because of his courtroom behaviour.

Former SARS commissioner Tom Moyane, a key Zuma enabler, was suspended in 2018 after he refused to step down. He was fired by Ramaphosa that year, a dismissal upheld by the Constitutional Court.

The Zondo Commission of Inquiry recommended that Moyane be charged with perjury and providing false information to Parliament in relation to his activities at SARS with consultancy Bain & Co, which hollowed out the service. Moyane’s sidekick, Jonas Makwakwa, has washed up in Botswana, where his involvement with the country’s revenue service has caused alarm.

Another Zuma appointee, former SAPS national commissioner General Khehla Sitole, who resigned in March 2022, was found by the courts to have put the interests of the ANC above those of the country in refusing to cooperate with an Independent Police Investigative Directorate investigation into the R45-million grabber scandal at the ANC Nasrec elective conference in 2017.

Former South African Airways director and Zuma enabler Dudu Myeni has been declared a delinquent director and was fined R120,000 for disclosing the identity of a witness at the Zondo Commission.

She was also arrested alongside former Bosasa-linked Trevor Mathenjwa on charges of fraud and corruption. Over and above this, she still has to pay about R6-million in cost orders.

Former Eskom and Transnet head and ANC MP Brian Molefe has been ordered to repay the R30-million he received as an illicit pension payout. Once destined for bigger things, Molefe had his reputation shredded when former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela exposed just how close Molefe was to the Gupta family.

Unmerry wives of Nkandla

As Zuma’s political fortunes waned and costs, legal and otherwise, began to mount, his domestic life began to prove as turbulent. As costs ate into his nest egg and his paranoia and suspicion coloured his world, Zuma began to shed some of the wives and lovers who had dedicated their lives to his project and produced about 21 children in the process.

Apart from the tragic death by suicide in 2000 of Zuma’s second wife, Kate Mantsho, mother of five of his children, including twins Duduzane and Duduzile, after 24 years of marriage, Nompumelelo Ntuli, or MaNtuli, was banished from fortress Nxamalala at Nkandla in 2015.

The country’s former fourth first lady, who married Msholozi in 2008, was accused of poisoning her husband, an accusation dismissed by the NPA, which declined to prosecute her because of a lack of evidence.

In a surprising turn of events, in January 2020, one of Zuma’s most loyal wives, sixth first lady Thobeka Madiba, was also barred from visiting Nxamalala. This after she was reportedly accused by her husband of removing SIM cards without his permission.

Madiba-Zuma, who married Zuma in 2010 at the height of his popularity, sued him for divorce and maintenance.

The former president’s ingoduso (fiancée), Nonkanyiso Conco, also known as ­“LaConco”, who was 24 when she gave birth to Zuma’s umpteenth son on his 76th birthday on 3 April 2018, was frozen out of La Famiglia when she posted on social media that she was essentially a single mother.

She now enjoys a career as a star on The Real Housewives of Durban and styles herself on X as “a woman of Purpose and Vision”, a “Social Entrepreneur”, as well as “Founder and CEO” of a cosmetic and clothing range.

Scoundrels seeking refuge

Refusing to accept election results in a country with a free press, opposition parties, ­legislation to protect the integrity of voting and a vocal civil society is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

Putin, who is a frontrunner (of course) in his country’s imminent “national election”, is less subtle, the world has come to learn, in dealing with opposition. Planes inexplicably exploding in mid-air or an agonising death by poison is more his style.

When he wins the next one (it is pre­ordained), Putin will remain on his throne until 2036 and his grip, as The Guardian Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth has noted, “will surpass even that of Joseph Stalin” and make him “the longest-serving Moscow leader since the Russian empire”.

For instinctively anti-democratic and venal men like Trump and Zuma and their growing ilk, Putin’s occasionally bare-chested fabulous life is a political wet dream.

The poverty and misery that surrounds them are just the spoils of war, the casualties in the race to the top of the cash pile.

Political patrons like Zuma and Trump need the political Viagra so favoured by despots, populists and autocrats: sycophants, cronies and enablers who are willingly co-opted into the hollowing-out and weakening of institutions of state accountability.

There is no ideology here, and what passes for it carries the aroma of carrion that perfumes the history of national socialist movements.

This is an extraordinary year globally for democracy, as more than 64 countries head to the polls. It is a moment in history when we will either succumb to the toxic charms of the venal or self-serving, or begin to rediscover common humanity and cooperation. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.