More rat than rabbit in Zuma’s tactics

In the late 1980s, when I worked at Joburg’s finest bookstore, we could not stock enough copies of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

Somehow the ancient treatise by the Chinese general and strategist had become a compulsory setwork in SA’s boardrooms. 

Being an executive  in those days,  pushing the spear-carriers to be more militaristic in their approach to war —  sorry, business —  must have been miserable,  especially given the flavour of apartheid rule.

History does not relate whether The Art of War was taught to ANC cadres such as Jacob Zuma during their military training in the Soviet Union. It is more likely that anyone doing boot camp on the Russian steppe was force fed the story and tactics of the battle of Stalingrad.

The former president’s pursuit of prosecutor Billy Downer and journalist Karyn Maughan is the latest sally of house-to-house fighting in his obvious strategy to grind his enemy into exhaustion and defeat.

None of Sun Tzu’s subtlety here, none of this  “behave with the discretion of a maiden; then, when the enemy gives an opening, dart in like a rabbit”.

No, what Maughan, Downer, the courts and the rest of the country have to look forward to come February 2023 is the legal equivalent of Rattenkrieg — the “Rat War” — in which the battle has spread to every bit of ground, from tower block to sewer. 

The Art of War is laden with aphorisms that might apply to Zuma’s tactics and the real threat his court action could pose to media freedom, for the general has much to say about exhausting one’s opponents.

Then again, he also said: “I have heard that in war haste can be folly, but have never seen delay that was wise.”