With enough skeletons in his cupboard to fill a graveyard, Arthur Fraser is the perfect political hostage. Last week, in an SABC interview, he admitted responsibility for Jacob Zuma’s medical parole get-out-of-jail card.
Fraser’s history makes him an ideal candidate to be a fall guy, as in this case.
He has helped to shield President Cyril Ramaphosa from criticism because Zuma’s release is seen as the action of a rogue official. Yet the buck stops with Ramaphosa and his cabinet.
Ramaphosa publicly welcomed Zuma’s release. "We’ve heard that he’s not well and we’d like to wish him a quick recovery as he’s restored back to his home to be with his loved ones," the president told an ANC gathering.
Fraser has owned the Zuma decision, presenting himself as the sacrificial political lamb. That Ramaphosa, as head of state, was not bothered about the circumstances of the release says it all. At the centre of the controversy is a more salient issue: the circumventing of the judiciary and the punishments it imposes.
But such issues are secondary in election season. Short-term thinking might have blinded Ramaphosa to the problems posed by Zuma’s release, because it has helped the ANC by easing discontent in KwaZulu-Natal over his incarceration.
As long as Zuma remained in custody, the ANC would have found campaigning for the local elections difficult in KZN. The entire province would have been a no-go area for Ramaphosa. The president might not have had a hand in jailing Zuma, but he held the key to releasing him — through a pardon or medical parole. That’s why he is in such a pickle, and probably why his government is not holding Fraser to account.
Fraser might have endeared himself to both Ramaphosa and Zuma. His contract expires this month and freeing Zuma was one of his last acts at correctional services. His ride into the sunset will have been smoothed by having done Zuma (and Ramaphosa) a huge favour.
Fraser and Zuma go back years. A former freedom fighter, he was one of the players in the "spy tapes" saga that muddied the waters of the arms deal investigation in the 2000s.
Mokotedi Mpshe, the prosecutions boss at the time, withdrew the corruption charges against Zuma in 2009 after recordings emerged of conversations between the prosecutors involved that Zuma’s lawyers said demonstrated a political conspiracy.
The Mail & Guardian reported at the time that Fraser, as deputy head of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), had helped Zuma’s team gain access to the tapes. Fraser denied this.
In his book The President’s Keepers, Jacques Pauw links Fraser to an "orgy" of fraud and corruption.
"During his time at the NIA, he embarked on a project to expand SA’s intelligence capabilities known as the principal agent network (PAN) and had a limitless budget," Pauw writes.
"Millions of rand in cash were transported in suitcases from a state money depot in Pretoria to ‘the Farm’, the nickname for the agency’s headquarters, otherwise known as Musanda, on the shores of the Rietvlei Dam, south of Pretoria. Much of the money in the PAN is a slush fund."
Fraser has rejected the allegations and begun defamation proceedings against Pauw and the book’s publishers.
People with skeletons in their cupboards are easy to coerce into being the fall guy, and fall guys are in constant demand in SA politics.
The judiciary may find its authority has been eroded right under Ramaphosa’s nose, and not only for Zuma’s benefit. Was it prescience on Ramaphosa’s part when he moved Fraser from the State Security Agency to correctional services in 2018?
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