Supporters threaten Zuma case backlash

Outside the High Court in Pietermaritzburg, supporters rally behind the ANC president in defiance of corruption charges.

A supporter of Jacob Zuma, the leader of South Africa's ruling ANC, protests outside court in Pietermaritzburg.

PIETERMARITZBURG, SOUTH AFRICA // "We will support him until death," said Musa Ngubani outside the High Court where he was selling Jacob Zuma DVDs as the ANC leader sought to have corruption charges against him dropped. Given the party's electoral dominance in South Africa, the case against Mr Zuma - 12 counts of fraud, two of corruption, and one each of racketeering and money laundering - is the only thing standing between the left-leaning populist and the presidency, and passions are high.

Before the hearing began, the ANC's be-suited secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, its treasurer Mathews Phosa, and Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of Cosatu, the trade union federation, danced a toyi-toyi, the bouncing march of the struggle against apartheid, in front of the courthouse. Senior ANC officeholders have said they are willing to "shoot and kill for Zuma", and while party spokesmen have played down the comments, insisting that they are merely rhetoric and taken out of context, Mr Ngubani had no doubts. "If it's necessary to do so yes, I can," he said.

Mr Zuma's lawyers are making use of every possible legal avenue to have the case dismissed before going to trial. Their latest ploy, and the subject of the hearing, is to argue the decision to prosecute him was unconstitutional. But with Schabir Shaik, his financial adviser, already convicted and serving a 15-year prison sentence for soliciting bribes for Mr Zuma, the spectacle raises concerns about pressure on the independence of the judiciary in the new South Africa, where the political opposition is largely ineffective, putting few checks and balances on the executive.

The presiding judge announced yesterday that he would rule on Sept 12 on whether to dismiss the charges, but also set Dec 8 as the provisional date for a criminal trial in case he does not throw out the legal action before then. Muzi Mahlambi, 39, a civil servant in the KwaZulu-Natal provincial department of education, was among the 3,000-strong crowd of Zuma supporters outside court. "We are sending that message [to the judges] to say whatever the verdict you come up with it's no longer a matter of being technical in the court of law, but it's a matter of looking at the bigger picture," he said.

Mr Zuma has secured himself wide popular support by seizing on the discontent of the poor who have seen few material benefits since the end of apartheid. "The masses of the country will not be happy if the verdict is negative to our expectations. It's something that we will not tolerate. Anything will be possible if people are angry," Mr Mahlambi said. But he said incongruously: "It's not intimidation."

Mr Zuma's supporters insist the case against him is a political conspiracy on behalf of Thabo Mbeki, the incumbent South African president who he ousted as ANC leader last year. Everything in South African politics is coloured by an elemental contest for power between the two men, who are polar opposites in style - one an aloof intellectual, the other a firebrand who entertained the crowd in Pietermaritzburg with a stirring rendition of his trademark campaign song Umshini Wami, or Bring Me My Machine Gun.

"This is merely a political trial and there's nothing legal about what's happening with the president of the ANC," said Buti Manamela, secretary general of the Young Communist League, condemning "clandestine, military-style guerrilla tactics investigations". "We will never stand aside when our own leader goes to jail; goes to the gallows, for crimes he has never committed," he said. Central to the case against Mr Zuma are claims he benefited to the tune of more than four million rand (Dh2.03m) from his relationship with Mr Shaik, and that while he was national deputy president payments were sought for him in connection with a multi-billion-dollar arms deal that has since become notorious for alleged corruption.