3 years ago
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Jacob Zuma (left) and Donald Trump (right). (Getty)
A former president faces criminal charges. What could possibly go wrong? For South Africa, the answer was: rather a lot. The parallels between Jacob G Zuma and Donald J Trump keep mounting, as the latter seeks to prosecute his prosecutor. Some in South Africa also believed a non-political prosecution was possible - and nobody really wants violence and looting. Phillip de Wet takes a closer look.
The day before he would formally face criminal charges for the first time, Donald J Trump recommended his prosecutor should "INDICT HIMSELF" on charges that he leaked information - which would shortly be discussed in court - to a journalist.
You could almost hear the weary sigh from South Africans who have been forced to watch Jacob G Zuma's attempt to privately prosecute his prosecutor for "leaking" information to News24's Karyn Maughan.
America and South Africa may be different places, but their most recent former presidents sure seem to be cut from the same cloth.
And America appears to be on the road to repeating many of South Africa's mistakes.
Both Zuma and Trump have furiously attacked the individuals involved in their prosecution as well as the judiciary and the very judicial system that underpinned their power while in office.
Both have alleged, not only without evidence but often in direct contradiction of the evidence, that they are the victims of racism, persecution, and plots.
Both have had deadly riots associated with them, violence many believe they could have prevented with nothing more than a few well-timed words, Zuma across many parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, and Trump at the US Capitol.
But while Zuma has been threatened with prosecution since before he was president, Trump is only now directly in the crosshairs, and that shows in the lag between the two countries.
America still - naively to South African eyes - believes there is such a thing as an apolitical prosecution of someone with such profile and power, even as the likes of Italy warn there is simply no way to achieve that.
Perhaps, then, America is still to learn what South Africa did, that prosecutors who consider politics to time matters such as to seem apolitical can undermine a prosecution, regardless of whether their intent is genuine or malevolent.
Or, perhaps, American democracy will indeed be strengthened once it gets over the deeper divisions Trump's prosecution will inevitably bring, as was once promised for South Africa.
Not soon, though. "Stalingrad" is not a word yet associated with Trump's legal strategy, still in its infancy, but the parallels with Zuma suggest it will be.
Trump, like Zuma, made a career out of kicking problems (such as potential bankruptcy) down the road. Trump, like Zuma, is of an age where sufficient delay could help keep him out of jail on health grounds, regardless of what else happens.
Trump, like Zuma, can find the funds to fight every point, to appeal every decision, and to generally drag things out to such an extent that the spectacle of a country for the first time criminally prosecuting a former president actually becomes boring.
What should arguably worry America in the meanwhile is what its equivalent of radical economic transformation (RET) may be. That formless, leaderless set of vague policy positions crystallised into a promise of revolution as Zuma's position grew obviously untenable, then refused to die.
The US, we've learnt in recent years, has many pre-existing divisions for the nastier type of politician to exploit. In South Africa, those tended to strengthen the positions of the two biggest parties - until RET and what it represented brought the war entirely within the ANC.
In 2024, South Africa will get to see just what that means in a national election. And maybe America will get another glimpse into its own future.
- Phillip de Wet is News24's writer-at-large.
English (US)