South African Leader Back in Court

The politician generally viewed as South Africa's President-in-waiting was back in court, Monday, for another round in his battle against corruption charges. As lawyers for Jacob Zuma tried to persuade a judge to dismiss as unlawful a total of 16 charges, ranging from money-laundering to racketeering, some 1,000 supporters staged a noisy rally in front of a giant TV screen outside the court in Pietermaritzburg. The hearing is expected to last two days, but the case itself will most likely drag on well beyond next April's elections — in which Zuma, having trounced current president Thabo Mbeki in a head-to-head race for leadership of the ruling African National Congress, looks primed to be elected president. (The ANC faces no serious challenge to its electoral majority.)

Zuma's legal difficulties are, in part, a reflection of the bitter power struggle that erupted inside the ruling ANC after the retirement of South Africa's first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela. Mbeki succeeded Mandela when he retired in 1998, with Zuma as his deputy, but the two became estranged over a variety of political issues and allegations of corruption against Zuma. In 2005, Mbeki fired Zuma as Deputy President.The following year, Zuma found himself facing separate criminal charges of rape and corruption. His supporters claimed the charges were fabricated by his political enemies, and Zuma was acquitted in the rape trial. The corruption case was thrown out. But Zuma's revenge came last December, when his landslide victory in the ANC's internal election showed the extent to which Mbeki had lost touch with his party rank-and-file. A stunned-looking Mbeki was heckled when he tried to address delegates, while Zuma — a populist who had championed grassroots economic grievances against the aloof and technocratic President — was cheered to an easy victory.

But despite the support of the country's dominant political party, Zuma's path to power may not be an easy one. Days after his election as party president, government prosecutors filed a new corruption case against him, though related to the previous allegations. The most serious allegation he currently faces is that he solicited an annual bribe of $43,500 dollars from French arms company Thint, to protect it during an investigation into a controversial arms deal.

The revival of the graft case has spurred some Zuma supporters to hysterical defenses of their man. ANC Youth League President Julius Malema even declared that he would "kill" for Zuma. The power struggle between his supporters and those of Mbeki has been immensely damaging to a party whose moral authority as a liberation movement has plunged in its era of governance, buffeted by corruption scandals, an inability to tackle rising crime and unemployment, and the unseemly spectacle of some its core members and backers becoming billionaires while much of the country remains mired in poverty. At the weekend, former ANC stalwart the Reverend Allan Boesak even accused his party of resurrecting "racial divisions and ethnic categorization" through its pro-black affirmative action programs.

Arguing that the manner in which the case aginst his client had been brought was unconstitutional, Zuma's lawyer Kemp J. Kemp asked Monday, "Where is the justice?" He has a point. At the highest levels, impartial justice seems increasingly under threat in South Africa. Zuma's supporters allege his rivals are using the organs of the state judicial system to fight a political battle against him, citing evidence that not all alleged offenders are pursued with equal vigor. Last year, for example, when South Africa's Commissioner of Police and loyal Mbeki supporter Jackie Selebi was facing prosecution over his links to an accused gang boss, Mbeki's administration suspended the prosecutor who had been trying to charge Selebi.

But the charge of trying to bend the judiciary to the will of politicians is also applied to Zuma's supporters. This year, judges on South Africa's constitutional court accused Cape Judge President John Hlophe of trying to influence their deliberations on the constitutionality of the case against Zuma in favour of the accused. Advocates of judicial independence in South Africa were hardly reassured when the new Zuma-allied ANC secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, shot back that the court was showing signs of being "counter-revolutionary".

Apartheid era President F.W. de Klerk, who also served as deputy president under Mandela, has begun a campaign to highlight what he claims is ANC abuse of power. "Everywhere the dividing lines between the state and the ruling movement are becoming more blurred," De Klerk told the Cape Town Press Club in June. The "rights and values" which he and Mandela enshrined in the country's 1994 constitution, "are under severe pressure," he said. It says something for how far the ANC has fallen from the moral high ground that in today's South Africa, a former apartheid ruler can re-invent himself as a defender of the public interest.