Why I asked Jacob Zuma the 'cloud' question

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – The ANC spokeswoman, Jesse Duarte, was getting pretty sick of us. “Look,” she said, “no one-to-one, okay? You can ask Mr Zuma what you want at his news conference on Tuesday.”

She was adamant. “Oh, and by the way,” she added, “We won’t be entertaining any questions on the rape case or the corruption charges.”

I’d been chatting to the press officer to South Africa’s president-in-waiting in the moments before Jacob Zuma strode into the roomful of journalists. I’d said how keen I was to put a question to him. I knew exactly what I wanted to ask.

But I had to swallow pretty hard when he handed me the microphone for the very first question. This wasn’t going to go down too well. But the words were coming out before my brain could edit them.

“Why is it, Mr Zuma,” I began, “that in a mature democracy with a free press, we journalists have been instructed not to ask you about the 783 corruption charges that were dropped?”

There was an audible sharp intake of breath among the assembled press corps. Gulp. He locked on, eye to eye. “Is this not in the public interest?” I managed.

This time it was the Big Man who swallowed hard. I had a flashback to the big rally two days earlier when I’d watched him sing his theme tune “Mshini Wami” in front of 120,000 adoring ANC supporters. “Bring me my machine gun,” is what it means. The former ANC guerrilla fighter was probably wishing for it now.

To give him his due, Jacob Zuma answered the question well. He hadn’t known that the press office was saying this, he said. They probably did so because they know I don’t like talking about it very much.

(The National Prosecution Authority had suddenly decided to drop all the charges two weeks ago. They covered tax evasion, fraud, money-laundering and other assorted counts of alleged corruption. The decision gave Mr Zuma a clear run at the presidency.)

“What about the cloud of suspicion hanging over you?” I asked. “What cloud?” he responded. “I see no cloud. Not even a mist.” Everybody laughed.

That turned out to be the quotation all the papers carried. But the question has since been the subject of some debate here. On the eve of the election, every other question had been about policy issues.

“It’s the sort of question you’d expect from a foreign correspondent straight off the plane,” a fellow correspondent based in Johannesburg told me. “No disrespect,” he said, “but it’s not as if journalists here haven’t been asking him about this over the past couple of weeks. It’s just sort of accepted now that it’s a done deal.”

Just accepted? That we’d never discover whether the man who’s going to be president of Africa’s richest and most powerful country is innocent or guilty? With smiling eyes, Mr Zuma had told me in the news conference to be careful as South Africa’s constitution states that you’re innocent until proven guilty.

The reason I feel vindicated (for raising the issue) is that for the past four days, I have spoken to many South Africans, from the poorest of the poor in the townships of Alexandra and Soweto to the “black diamond” elite of the new middle class, who say they just wish their new president-to-be could have first been proven innocent.

Wrong way round, I know, but in the minds of many of Zuma’s constituents at both ends of the economic spectrum, he’s tainted. It’s not to say I haven’t encountered many others who say, “C’mon, give the guy a chance; let’s judge him on whether he delivers on his promises,” – which have been legion.

Perhaps it’s the European in me that questions why so many here think it’s okay to have a president whose personal record may not be as squeaky clean as the administration he promises to run. Put it down to culture clash.

In a superb new book by the Financial Times’s former Johannesburg bureau chief, Alec Russell, After Mandela, he cites a western diplomat who asked Nelson Mandela what he made of Zuma.

“Zuma is really an African leader,” the old man reportedly replied. This observation will be weighed by many here with considerable trepidation.

Yesterday I was promised an interview with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nelson’s ex, who’s tipped for a cabinet post in the new government. She’s been convicted of fraud, accessory to assault and kidnap, but Zuma’s brought her back from oblivion.

I met her briefly as she voted in Soweto. I was told to follow her convoy of bodyguards in shades and speedy BMWs back to her house, just down the road. But when we got there, the big gate swung shut right in front of our overheating minivan.

For hours, we waited in the sun, hoping the grande dame of the townships would see us, as she’d promised. A gaggle of local children entertained us at the gates. “Can we sing for you?” they asked, before launching into moving rendition of Nkosi Sikele, South Africa’s beautiful national anthem.

Mrs Mandela never did deliver on her promise to me. I was eventually told she’d been offended by my question when she’d arrived to vote. I’d asked how it felt to be back in action. She said she’d never been away. On reflection, it does indeed seem wise to think very hard before you ask a question here.