Thisday

The trial of former President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, holds lessons for the continent

Former South African President, Mr Jacob Zuma, has proceeded to prison. This follows a verdict by the Constitutional Court sentencing him to a 15-month jail term. Zuma is facing an avalanche of charges for corruption and abuse of office allegedly committed during his tenure as president. But that is not why he is currently in jail. He is incarcerated for contempt of court, which is routine in most African countries. Although Zuma appealed the judgment, the court insisted that he must first obey the imprisonment verdict.

Irrespective of the eventual outcome of this case and Zuma’s appeal, what is important is the significance of the verdict itself and the imprisonment of Zuma for governance and accountability. The prevalent culture of African politics has been the reign of the ‘big man’ president. In the unwritten code of this culture of leadership, the president is regarded and treated as one above the law. Most often he takes liberties with public resources, flouts the rules of public conduct, tramples on the rights of the very people he is elected to serve and generally lives above what ought to be the guiding principle of all democratic dispensations.

The rule of the outlaw as king is perhaps the best description of the rule of law in much of the continent. In turn, African judiciaries have failed to rise to the imperatives of the rule of law and their own independence in terms of the judgments they deliver when consequential politically exposed persons are on trial. In most countries within the continent, cases that call the integrity of political leaders to question receive cynical treatments from judges who have tended to see their tenures as extensions of the reign of the political executives that appoint or nominate them for such appointments.

The general impression around the rest of the world is that African democracy operates without regard for the rule of law when it comes to issues of accountability by those who lead. At best, there are two sets of laws in much of Africa: one for the ruler and the other for the rest of the citizenry. This is more so when it comes to matters relating to corruption and public accountability. The African ‘big man’ president has operated with an unlimited sense of entitlement to public resources and the national wealth. The president and his family freely help themselves to the resources of the state without any fear of consequences. This is a cultural carryover from ancient African feudal dispensations which should have no place in modern democracies where sovereign power resides in republican ethos.

The Zuma case may not have been concluded. The charges of corruption against him in various courts are yet to be heard just as investigations on some of the issues are ongoing. He is yet to file his defenses in a number of these cases. But the allegations of diversion of public resources to private ends hung heavy on Zuma’s personal reputation and political legacy. Also, the African National Congress (ANC) is under pressure to salvage its hard won and long-standing reputation from the burden of Zuma’s less than dignifying record.

In contrast to what the South African court has done with the Zuma case, a combination of weak and compromised institutions – cutting across the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary – have allowed the culture of corruption to thrive in Nigeria, a culture which has badly damaged the country’s reputation. Most of the overpaid politicians and public officials have continued to fleece the very people they are supposed to protect and yet walk the streets free. Because the judiciary is weak and heavily compromised, there are hardly consequences for bad behaviour.

There is a sense in which Zuma can be seen as being on trial not just for his own failings but also for the African continent. At the end, his plight may yet serve as an abiding precedent of the obligations of the rule of law as the irreducible definer of standards for the conducts of all those who must serve their nations at the apex of political power.