What will the old guard do?

If Jacob Zuma thought Nelson Mandela’s death would somehow shift public attention from his personal problems, or repair a fractured African National Congress, he must be solely disappointed.

For the many testimonies to Mandela’s integrity and humanity at the memorial service served to lay bare the flaws in Zuma’s own character to the point that he was booed by ANC supporters.

The Nkandla cloud still hangs over him like the ghost of Christmas past. His ministerial lackeys have tried to move the blame for the compound’s excesses on to their predecessors, claiming that Zuma was not party to the planning of them, but those scapegoats have refused to lie down.

Trying to row back against these turbulent currents, Jacob Zuma recently turned down a five per cent salary increase. But people are asking why he didn’t insist that the whole Cabinet did the same.

Now the biggest trade union in the tripartite alliance, the Metal Workers Union, is calling for his resignation and threatening to withdraw its support for the ANC at the next general election.

That election is less than four months away. Surely the ANC old guard – Cyril Ramaphosa, Thabo Mbeki and others – cannot just stand by and watch their party fragment ever further. Surely they will try to persuade him to step down before the poll or even threaten to impeach him if he refuses.

After all, with much less justification, Zuma himself forced Mbeki out five years ago.