As most of us know, calls for Zuma to fall have resurfaced – with vigour. After President Jacob Zuma, of South Africa, reshuffled his cabinet – which included replacing Pravin Gordhan with Malusi Gigaba – outcries flared up all over South Africa. After all, Gigaba has no financial experience, Gordhan was doing an excellent job and there are multiple negative speculations over why Gordhan was fired – including that Gordhan was unwilling to sign off on the Nuclear Deal. Not to mention that this is the second time that Zuma has done his level best to make us the new Zimbabwe by killing the Rand (the first time would be 9/12).

Zuma defended his reshuffle by saying that it is the time for young leaders. Sure, I could believe that, if he himself were not 74, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma were not 68, Bathabile Dlamini (who retains her position after almost starving a third of the South African population) were not 54, Joe Maswanganyi were not 50, Thembelani Nxesi were not 58, Hlengiwe Mkhize were not 64, Cyril Ramaphosa were not 64, Gwede Mantashe were not 61… You get my point. We often need new blood and new ways of thinking in our teams, but to replace individuals who were doing a splendid job with those who are not qualified is unethical at best. Oddly, Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas (former Finance Minister and Deputy Finance Minister) claim that they were not informed that they had been fired, and found out via media – as do others. One might wonder whether that breaks any labour laws?

After the reshuffle (the fourth in the past three years, the eleventh since Zuma began his first term), Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, Treasurer General of the ANC Zweli Mkhize and Secretary General of the ANC Gwede Mantashe openly opposed the reshuffle… Until 5 April.

In a not-so-unexpected statement, Gwede Mantashe said that the public disagreement over the cabinet reshuffle was a mistake “that should not be committed again.” After an extended National Working Committee (ANCNWC) meeting, Mantashe briefed the media. The meeting discussed, amongst other things, calls by party alliance members such as SACP and COSATU, as well as the South African public, for Zuma to resign. Mantashe said the NWC resolved to engage the alliance partners and civil society on the matter. Conveniently delaying a resolution.

Mantashe said consultation on matters of deployment “is a principle of the organisation, not a favour.” He continued: “The prerogative of president, premiers and mayors should be exercised after consultation with leadership of the organisation. That’s a conference resolution.” Funny how Zuma totally ignored that resolution, just like he has ignored the Constitution and the Public Protector.

It was claimed (by Ramaphosa) that Zuma used a fake intelligence report as his basis to fire Gordhan and Jonas. Mantashe commented: “The issue of the intelligence report complicated the matter, creating a lot of unhappiness. [The intelligence report was] presented as the only reason for his [Gordhan’s] removal, which is unfortunate and incorrect. There was a breakdown of relationship between the president and the minister. That should have been sufficient a [reason] than to complicate matters by presenting a questionable intelligence report.”

Why was there a breakdown in the relationship between Zuma and Gordhan in the first place? Simply put: because Gordhan would not allow Zuma to loot the country. Gordhan put South Africans first, and would not sign off on the Nuclear Deal (or other shady agreements). On the other hand, Gigaba openly admits that the Nuclear Deal will now be implemented – at great cost to the taxpayer.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s cut South Africa’s investment status to junk status this week, following an emergency meeting after the cabinet reshuffle. S&P were only scheduled to rate South Africa in June: this means that the downgrade was off-schedule, citing the political uncertainty (four finance ministers in 18 months) as one of their reasons. Another example of a country that received an off-schedule downgrade is Brazil – and Brazil went into recession soon after.

Before the downgrading, Gigaba said: “I don’t ask questions, I simply comply with the instructions given to me,” which indicates exactly what his mentality is towards serving the South African people versus following orders. He continued: “There’s so much going on in our country that changing a certain individual won’t cause a credit downgrade.”

Directly after the downgrade, Gigaba claimed that S&P had told him about the downgrade in confidence, so he could not prepare the nation for it in any way. Funny how he not only apparently kept the change from the public – he all but assured us that there would be no downgrade. He lied, plain and simple. What a start for a new Finance Minister – and I’d be very surprised if some of his friends didn’t suddenly get really lucky on the stock market around the time of the downgrade.

Mantashe claimed: “The ANC and its government remain committed to prudent financial management. We have confidence in new Finance Minister [Malusi Gigaba] and deputy [Sifiso Buthelezi].” This supposed confidence is a mistake, already proven by how ineptly Gigaba handled the downgrade. It is also contradicts what top members of the ANC had said publicly before the ANCNWC meeting – and I think it is clear which opinion was accurate.

“There will be no ANC member who will vote, in either way, for a motion of the opposition.” Those are also the words of Mantashe, relating to the motion of no confidence that opposition parties are set to table soon. If anyone was deceived into thinking that the ANC was moving past slate voting and prioritising party politics above the lives of South Africans, look closely at this. The ANC’s pride and patronage networks have them wrapped up tight – they are helpless and useless, and could not lift a finger to keep Zuma from bleeding South Africa dry.

Always with the ANC, it is the party first. Not South Africa, not truth, not conscience. Soon, when the time comes to determine if Zuma has pushed even the fossils in the ANC NEC into admitting that he is single-handedly ensuring the downfall of the ANC in 2019, we will see if that party is capable of taking a stand against the Corruptor-in-Chief – or whether, as expected, they will hold South Africa down so that Zuma and the Guptas can take turns violating our laws and ravaging our economy in a disgusting public demonstration of the political rape culture that has infected the ANC.

If all of this – including the inevitable inaction of the ANC when the no confidence vote offers us redemption – does not prove to you that ANC members have handed their figurative balls over to the president, I do not know what does. It is long past due that we as a nation must unite and say: “Enough is enough!”. We want our government to serve us, not rule us – and right now, the only interests they serve are their own. The ANC is no longer capable of self-correction… if they ever were.

If the ANC will not free us from the predations of Zuma and his Zupta empire, we need to take up the matter ourselves, as South Africans, or we will soon look at the Zimbabwean economy with envy burning in our empty stomachs.

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