After one of ANC president Jacob Zuma’s many court appearances, a group of
alliance leaders joined journalists for drinks at Pietermaritzburg’s Imperial
hotel.
There Lindani Mthembu, the late SACP KwaZulu-Natal organiser, described then
president Thabo Mbeki as “the prince of plots”. Cruel pub humour, yes, but
Mthembu was on the money.
Mbeki’s signature on the presidential oath of office was barely dry when the
first plot, an unprovable conspiracy to assassinate him by ANC leaders Cyril
Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Mathews Phosa, surfaced.
Overnight, Mahlamba Ndlopfu became Conspiracy Central. Zuma, then Mbeki’s
deputy, felt compelled to issue a declaration of loyalty to his boss.
The prince, however, was not content with stitching up his comrades.
HIV/Aids was a plot by the pharmaceutical industry to dump toxic drugs on the
African market; local intellectuals were the unAfrican running dogs of
international capital; the media were the whores of the counter-revolution; and
opposition parties in cahoots with dark forces in the international arena.
Plot mania peaked with a pair of “intelligence reports” one on the hoax e-mail
saga, the other calling itself the Special Browse Mole Report.
But the irony of all this was that, while his henchmen were spinning tales of
plot after plot against Mbeki, he and his inner circle were in fact conspiring
against Zuma.
The prey, it turns out, was the predator, cooking up ways to nail the man he saw
as his Nemesis at every turn.
And on the streets and in the High Court, Pietermaritzburg the allegations
of a plot against Zuma held water.
They hold water too, it seems, in the office of acting national director of
Public Prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe, where Zuma’s legal team has submitted
evidence that indeed there was a conspiracy against him, engineered by the
prince and conducted through the manipulation of organs of state.
The nature of the plotting was so convoluted and so invasive of independent
institutions that Mpshe has been left with no choice but to dump the case
against Zuma.
With acknowledgements to Paddy Harper
and The
Times.