Very strange bedfellows....

It somehow seems like Donald Trump and his White House loyalists have been closely studying Jacob Zuma’s post-Presidency political life. In a Daily Maverick analysis, J Brooks Spector notes that Zuma’s ‘Stalingrad Strategy’as simple in theory, but devious and intricately complex in its execution. ‘The fundamental idea was to fight every single jot and tittle of any potential or possible charge; countering them first in the original court of jurisdiction and then through an elaborate maze of appeals over the very processes of the charges – but rarely, if ever, even coming close to confronting the criminal core of any of the charges. The eventual fog of the resulting multiple challenges and appeals has been designed to make it fiendishly difficult to figure out the actual status of any of the charges or claims where the former President is named as the guilty party, thereby stopping the actual prosecution of anything in its tracks, even as he claims that all he really wants is a fair day in court to clear his name.’ Spector says that by last Wednesday, it seemed the White House was now following an Americanised version of the very same playbook in their attempts to forestall Trump’s impeachment.

Full Daily Maverick analysis