Many people always say Jacob Zuma is not very clever. In a certain respect he is actually very clever, maybe not in the sense of IQ, but rather streetwise (and no, not the fried chicken and 4 chippies) clever.
Think about it for a second. This week we learnt from Colonel Christine Anderson that Zuma did indeed authorise the go ahead for the Gupta airplane to land at Waterkloof Airforce Base. Funny that a few days later we learn that Waterkloof Airforce Base is in fact not a National Key Point (according to the News24 article “National key points: What you weren't meant to know”).
So if Zuma is implicated by Lieutenant Colonel Christine Anderson, what is the worst that can happen? Anyway, before anything can actually happen we are probably going to have some heated legal debates as to whether or not Waterkloof Airforce Base is a national key point. As usual this will drag on for ages until Zuma wipes it under the carpet and the room containing the carpet is burnt to the ground (Arms Procurement déjà vu – files going missing, people forgetting…hint hint Mbeki et al.).
A number of other stories also come to mind and you can see it time and again how this man wiggles his way out of any situation.
Having been in the ANC intelligence (Chief of Intelligence Department) long ago, Zuma knows his friends’ and enemies’ darkest secrets. Those skeletons that are more mysterious than King Tutankhamun’s mummified corpse!
That is why we see ministers without qualifications being appointed. Unfortunately we don’t always realise this and those are the things that Zuma exploits to stay in power – this is why I refer to him as clever.
Hell, show me another guy with next to nothing education being able to ward off criminal offences one after another for years and years; even well-educated lawyers can’t do what he has done the last 8-9 years!
As long as Zuma keeps his distance from the public (hint, Nkandla = National Key Point, Proposed Law on Protection of Information, keeping tabs on skeletons), the masses will always see him as clever from far.