Jacob Zuma is not avoiding reality - He simply doesn't understand it!

Jacob Zuma is not avoiding reality

He simply doesn't understand it!

Stes de Necker

Rand Daily Mail - ALLISTER SPARKS

19 August 2015

It’s the economy stupid!

"I felt like nailing that 1992 Bill Clinton election poster to President Jacob Zuma’s door after reading the rosy report on the state of the nation he presented at a special media conference last week. Such a sanguine outlook when just about every statistic on the state of the economy is pointing southwards. 

What could one do to get the leader of our rapidly declining nation to face reality?

In much the same vein, Tony Leon has suggested the use of a huge and new American bunker-buster bomb in the hope of being able to penetrate the bunker from reality into which Zuma appears to have withdrawn himself.

But on reflection I’m afraid I have come to the conclusion that neither strategy would be effective.

Because I don’t think Zuma is deliberately avoiding reality. I think he doesn’t understand it.”

Tracking over his own personal record of financial dealings and relationships, one is driven to the conclusion that the president of SA just doesn’t understand matters to do with money.

Zuma may be poorly educated, but that doesn’t mean he is not intelligent.

The two are not synonymous. Zuma is clever, in a cunning, street-smart way, that accounts for his skills at political manipulation.

But when it comes to money, whether in matters personal or of the state, there is a void. A great big vacuous hole.

He is a man of expensive tastes and large appetites, but when it comes to satisfying those needs there is a consistent inability to relate them to the costs involved.

We know from the record that when Zuma returned to SA after 10 years on Robben Island and 12 in exile, he found himself in financial difficulties.

He had four wives and 20-something children to support, while his only income was a special pension the ANC paid to former prisoners. Even when he was "redeployed" to KwaZulu-Natal to become an MEC in Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s coalition government, Zuma’s salary would have been about R25 000 a month — nowhere near enough for a man with such rapacious needs.

It was at that point, we learn from the trial record of the Schabir Shaik case, that Zuma turned to Shaik, saying he couldn’t make ends meet and would have to leave politics to look for a job. To which Shaik replied in words that, in effect, said: "Don’t do that, comrade. Your role is too important. I’ll look after you."

What Shaik did to help Zuma was to pay his children’s school fees and the family’s clothing and food bills.

Family members would simply call at specified shops and take what they needed, and Shaik would settle the bills as they came back to him.

We thus have a paper trail, derived from the Shaik trial record, of Zuma’s spending patterns and how they compared with his income. The disjuncture is illuminating.

It is obvious, as Judge Hilary Squires found, that Shaik was not helping Zuma as a matter of charity.

Zuma was economic affairs MEC in the provincial government as well as being national chairman of the ANC, and Shaik’s aim was to use Zuma’s political influence to leverage valuable contracts for his own company, Nkobi Holdings.

As Squires put it, the relationship between Shaik and Zuma was one of "mutually beneficial symbiosis".

“But looking at the figures on record, I reckon that because of Zuma’s spendthrift ways, he was as much of a burden as he was a help in that relationship.

Between July 1996 and December 2003, Zuma’s income amounted to R3.86-million and his expenditure to R4.24-million — leaving Shaik to settle the shortfall of R1.2-million.

He had to use Nkobi’s bank overdrafts to do that.”

Nkobi did get some arms deal contracts as a result of the relationship, notably one, in tandem with French arms company Thomson CSF, to provide the combat suites for a fleet of corvettes purchased to patrol the South African coast. But these were not enough to make Shaik the mega-rich man I’m sure he expected to become.

In the course of the Shaik trial, the state ordered a forensic audit of Shaik and Zuma’s financial records, which were then presented to the court in a 259-page report. The forensic auditor, Johan van der Walt, spent 16 days in the witness box taking the court through the detail of that report.

We are indebted to an excellent little book, Paul Holden’s The Arms Deal in Your Pocket, for extracting some of the key items from that report.

They present a picture of Zuma maintaining a lifestyle that was well beyond his means, and making purchases without regard to the costs involved — with Shaik scrambling along behind to cope with the financial mess.

• In 1995, Zuma took out a bond for a home in Killarney, Johannesburg, for R400 000. Three years later, the bond was R30 000 in arrears. Shaik arranged payment of R40 000, but it was too late. The bank sued Zuma for R443 000 plus interest, and the matter had to be settled out of court.

• In June 1997, Standard Bank informed Zuma his current account was in arrears, and four months later sued him for arrears of R118 842.

•That same year Zuma bought a Mercedes-Benz car, but couldn’t even pay the first instalment on it.

• The following year, he bought another Mercedes-Benz for R250 000, but almost immediately debit orders started arriving to settle the financing. Shaik had to come to the rescue when the company threatened legal action.

• In May 2001, Zuma financed a Mitsubishi Pajero for R275 000. Two years later, he still owed R350 000 on the car, R129 000 of which was in arrears — even though Shaik had paid R47 000 towards the financing.

Apply this kind of economic thinking to the Nkandla project and one begins to realise that Zuma was hopelessly out of his depth when it came to recognising its horrendous wastefulness.

He, doubtless, knew what he wanted in order to make the place a fine rural retreat for himself and his family, just as he knew that he wanted a fine Mercedes-Benz and a Mitsubishi Pajero.

But then, as now, he appears not to have been able to relate wishes to costs and affordability.

Worst of all, we now have Zuma exhibiting the same economic incomprehension on a national scale, with his insistence that we engage the Russians or the Chinese to build eight or nine nuclear reactors for Eskom.

We are being told nothing about the costs, which will certainly be astronomical, of building and running these monsters. We are told we will know the costs when the contracts are signed.

All we know is that Zuma has been in a huddle on this matter with Russian President Vladmir Putin, from whom I wouldn’t buy a second-hand car. Essentially, Zuma is saying to us: "Trust me on this."

With his record?