JZ deserves public ridicule
JACOB Zuma will arguably go down in history as the most widely hated and despised head of state this country has ever had – and that is a great pity. I have been thinking about the songs and the slogans of the liberation movement since the 1960s as a possible indicator of how we felt about white heads of state. The lyrics of one song went: “Ngomhla sibuyayo kothula kuthi du! Kokhala uVorster. Kokhala uVerwoerd. Kokhala imbayimbayi. Kothula kuthi du [When we return there’ll be perfect silence. Vorster and Verwoerd will cry. There will be sounds of the cannon. There will be perfect silence]!” Another song went: “O baleka, baleka, baleka Vorster. Nanku Mkhoto, nanku Mkhont’usufikile. Singamasotsha, amasotsha kaLuthuli, amasostha, amasotsha kaLuthuli. Mayibuye, mayibuye i-Afrika, eyathathwa, eyathathwa ngamabhunu [Run, Vorster, run. Umkhonto weSizwe is here. We are Luthuli’s soldiers. Let Africa, which was taken by the Boers, come back].” Another: “Mahlomoleng a ka Tambo o na le nna. Ke Pitie le Vorster Tambo o na le nna [In my moments of pain Tambo is with me. Whether my pain is occasioned by Piet or Vorster, Tambo is with me].” Another simply implored Oliver Tambo to negotiate with P W Botha to release Nelson Mandela so that he could govern us. These songs conveyed what needed to be done to free the country. Even where violence was threatened, there was really no personal animosity expressed towards any of the persons whose names were mentioned in the songs. The closest to a personal insult in any of the things we chanted during the struggle was when reference would be made to Botha’s testes – the chant likened them to those of a goat. Now fast-forward to this year and check the things that are said about Zuma on Facebook and in WhatsApp exchanges. The factual correctness or otherwise of the postings is immaterial to the point I wish to argue. The disparaging remarks are too many to list, but four will do. In a video circulated on WhatsApp two toddlers are asked for their views on Zuma. They both decry his appropriation of our tax money to improve his Nkandla homestead and one goes on to question his intelligence, stating that he could have built a double storey instead of rondavels with our tax money. During the #FeesMustFall campaign there was a placard on Facebook which said: “Fees must be reduced to a figure Zuma can read.” As we felt the pressure of drought and simmered under the heat waves which struck over South Africa, a post came up on WhatsApp: “It is so hot in South Africa – maybe Zuma has eaten money meant to pay for rainfall.”
A Facebook post by a black woman I consider fairly intelligent called Zuma a thief. Except the last-mentioned post, where my friend was clearly angry, the other posts were light-hearted. I don’t think they should, for that reason, be treated as jokes geared merely at getting us to laugh. There’s a seriousness about the jokes which has a feeling of deja vu about it. We exchanged a great deal of laughter during the era of apartheid, but it was the kind which said: “I’m laughing now, but I know one day we’ll meet in a dark alley and only one of us will come out alive.” We had to sport a laughing public face because our options were severely constricted. Everything the authorities did was stacked against us, but we were allowed neither to be cheeky nor to get angry. As Steve Biko put it, the totality of the system was such as to provoke us and at the same time control the ways we responded to the provocation. And so the loads of laughter we traded disguised anger and a sense of frustration which were not allowed to find expression. Perhaps we are back to that kind of situation. We are forced to watch the ruination of the country under the leadership of a man who was never our choice in the first place. Before he was foisted on us, South Africans from all different walks of life expressed concerns about having him preside over us. His party told us we would have him as our president whether we wanted him or not. And we got him. We are condemned to putting up with him for 10 years. The party which gave him to us as a present is just about as helpless as we all are in reining him in. Writing in Business Day, Gareth van Onselen reminds us that Zuma has reshuffled his executive eight times since 2009, and that there have been more than 100 changes in ministerial and deputy ministerial positions in that period. He reminds us further that there have been more than 120 changes of directors-general during Zuma’s presidency. It is reported that some 60% of the ANC’s national executive members are beholden to Zuma for their public positions and their salaries. Van Onselen remarks: “The relentless merry-go-round at senior management and executive level means no one is ever comfortable and everyone’s allegiance is first and foremost to the president, for fear they will be pushed off the ride or in the hope they will be invited to join it.” This suggests that the man is aware of the objectionable nature of his conduct and that he deliberately sets out to construct hedges around it. In doing so, he opens up the space for South Africans to say things about him they never said even about apartheid heads of state. And that is as it should be, since they had every right to expect better from Zuma.
