The President's Keepers Quotes

“What I have revealed is an orgy of depravity and venality, and if there is any attempt to stop the publishing of this book, it will be because they do not want you to know about it.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Only after Zuma has looked after himself comes the small little problem of governing the Republic and its millions and millions of hungry, uneducated and jobless voters who are looking to him for salvation and deliverance.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“There is no dispute: Jacob Zuma has ripped the society and state to shreds. He swore at his inauguration to be faithful to our country and that he would observe, uphold and maintain our beautiful Constitution. It was all bullshit.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“the South Africa that Zuma has created has rendered sleazebags blameless, guiltless and even righteous.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“countries are no longer countries, but fiefdoms run by tiny hyper-elites, exclusively for their own benefit”.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“The problem with the recent history of crime intelligence is this: there is little honour, no moral compass, a complete lack of integrity. And that is why South Africans should be very, very concerned.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Predictably, a full-scare intelligence and propaganda war has been unleashed in the run-up to the ANC elective conference.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“apathy that creates a breeding ground for the evil monsters that will in the end devour us all.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Why has no one, not the Hawks with their serious commercial crimes unit or the police's crime intelligence unit, ever investigated the shenanigans of this family? The State Security Agency (SSA) has a unit that specialises in organised crime. What have they been doing all these years? Why have the Guptas and their associates been allowed to amass their ill-gotten fortunes with such impunity for so long? Why, now that evidence of this is out in the open, are our law enforcement agencies still sitting on their backsides?”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“The ongoing reports continue to demonstrate years of the most horrendous and systematic looting, stealing, corruption, money laundering and abuse of our state agencies and state-owned enterprises imaginable. Some losses run into billions of rand. Much of it is taxpayers' money – money that could and should have gone to fund needy tertiary students, build more schools and provide more services to disadvantaged communities; money that could have addressed issues that have been fuelling many of the civil protests in our country in recent years.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“In his first five years, Zuma had ripped like a tornado through the state's institutions and wreaked havoc across the land. But the worst was yet to come. In his second term, which has two years left as I write this, the windstorm has been upgraded to tsunami status and Zuma is ravaging the Republic.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“To prevail and to enrich himself, Zuma has been prepared to defy the Constitution, risk the economy, jeopardise social grants, allow his cronies to plunder and capture the state, and look on while the law enforcement agencies implode.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Poor JZ is the perpetual victim. In the case of Nkandla, he was the victim of a 'supply-chain' fiasco; something he knew nothing about.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Zuma may have the appearance of a scuzzy ghost, but the war against his wretched, calamitous, inept and divisive rule is far from over. Those who thought that Zuma was down and out have underestimated him. Beware: his middle name is not for nothing Gedleyihlekisa. It means 'the one who laughs while grinding his enemies'.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“His handlers have built an enormous blockhouse for him, and he almost never strays from its air-locked confines. We only encounter him at the occasional press conference, where we are never allowed to ask follow-up questions, or in Parliament, where he trundles through the proceedings. Think about this for a second: a sophisticated, populous, middle-income nation with a large international profile has no fucking idea what the president thinks, if he thinks anything at all. How did we come to be led by a shadow?”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Ngcukana concluded that Zuma is the “ultimate traitor” for having subverted the police, the Hawks, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the intelligence agencies.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Like most South Africans, I realised that should a man accused of fraud and his henchmen lay their hands on the state's coffers, it would be as fatal as handing an alcoholic the keys to his local Liquor City.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Zuma had been infected by the most noxious disease of politics: greed.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“The leader of the delegation to Zuma was reportedly Lloyd Hill. At the opening, Hill thanked the president for seeing them and said in Afrikaans: “OK, ouens, hier's julle kans nou. Die ou ballie is 'n naai net soos ons [OK, guys, this is your opportunity. This old fossil is a fucker just like us].”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Zuma is one of the most lampooned and jeered heads of state in the world and can easily be brushed aside as an uneducated peasant – yet he is in fact a brilliant strategist.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“It is often said that Zuma is proof that anyone, even from the humblest beginnings, can rise to the top. A son of a domestic worker mother and policeman father who died when he was a young boy, Zuma was chiselled from the land north of the Tugela River in KwaZulu-Natal. Called the land of hills, honey and cobras, it is an area tormented by poverty and stands in stark contrast to the rolling sugar estates and “white monopoly capital” on the other side of the Tugela.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Zuma vowed at his inauguration: “This is a moment of renewal. I will devote myself to the well-being of the Republic and all of its people.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“We have become world leaders in income inequality, racial tension, rape and illicit financial outflows.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Can you imagine charging one of the most powerful people in the country with treason and those around him with fraud and corruption?”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“A pattern of appointing cronies and loyalists in key positions emerged at the outset of Zuma's presidency. He was mindful that he could still be brought to book for corruption in the future, and set in motion a shadow security state that would undermine the independence of the police and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“The campaign against the SARS “rogue unit” was driven by elements in the SSA ... Suffice it to say for now that the stories in the Sunday Times were bullshit, but they were integral to the destruction of the most effective law enforcement organisation in the country.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“I can basically go to prison or at least be prosecuted for what I have revealed to you about the PAN programme investigation. The SSA will argue that I have jeopardised national security and endangered the lives of agents. This is, of course, nonsense. I have not revealed any state secrets and have not endangered any operations that are genuinely in the interest of national security.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“I'm not a journalist any longer,” I told him. “I'm a chef!”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“What is the typical spy? To start with, they think that they are on a mission to save the world. The worlds of Matt Damon and Daniel Craig are slick, fast-paced and sexy. Their suits never crinkle, women always say yes, and their cars shoot missiles. Real-life spy sagas unfold with far less panache. Overseas research has shown intelligence agents at the CIA to be often college graduates with low-value degrees; they are outsiders or loners, they have family or friends in the intelligence or armed services, they can't work with money and love firearms. Much of a spy's work these days is sifting through data.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“I want to write a book again,” I said to Sam on a blazingly hot afternoon on the veranda of the Red Tin Roof.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison