PETER BRUCE: Zuma is panicking as his cover-up time runs out
'Pretending you're not scared of prison is one thing. Knowing, for sure, that you're a central suspect in a massive criminal conspiracy to steal from your own country is quite another'
If reports are accurate that President Jacob Zuma is seriously demanding that his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, replace him as interim president until the 2019 general elections, and that his energy minister, David Mahlobo, remain in his position as conditions for his resignation - and I've heard them more than once - then he is in danger of losing his remaining dignity. How far can a man fall? From a position of huge power one day to the point where, in order to protect himself from arrest and financial ruin, he turns the negotiations on an orderly transfer of state power from the outgoing leader to incoming leader into a farce that would rival the Marx Brothers for slapstick.All the world knows why he wants Dlamini-Zuma and Mahlobo there - to look after him. Not the party and certainly not the country. It is pathetic and a measure of how politically inept he was, despite his once formidable tactical reputation, at calculating the race for the ANC leadership last year. He ge...
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