Zuma Zuma Zuma

Zuma Zuma Zuma!
(Or perhaps it should be #Zuma #Zuma #Zuma ?)

I haven't blogged in ages so I figured I may as well add my 3 cents to the present furore.

I had a facebook discussion with a friend recently, about what he eloquently called the current "obligation towards political silence." Basically the idea is that one of the most profound and important responsibilities white South Africans have is to shut up.

Which of course is difficult for us, because we are an opinionated lot.

Now I've been watching the Zuma saga unfold, in the wake of the "political silence" conversation.

One interesting thing about how the scandal has gone down this time is that there is not too much vocal white outrage. If you are not white and you want to understand this, this is pretty much what has happened(*):

When Zuma first barged into our white collective consciousness, he seemed to be a lecherous rapist up to his eyeballs in all sorts of fraud and sinister political maneuvering. And what was worse, he was inspiring crowds of black people to get very very angry and sing songs about wanting their machine guns. White South Africans have been raised from birth into a fear that black people want to kill them. So if you get a big enough crowd of them angry enough, all hell is going to break loose. The "swart gevaar," and all of that. And of course on top of all this is his standard two education (or whatever it is), his seeming support of the rabid Malema, his buddies the communists...

So in the white mind, the end was nigh, soon they are going to start burning tires and taking the farms, those crowds Zuma has been whipping into a frenzy, then nationalising everything in sight, then who will be safe... better make sure our passports are in order. We knew we were on the way to becoming the next Zimbabwe, etc etc.

Which is all completely absurd, of course, but there you go, white people were pretty scared. Irrationally scared, but scared nonetheless.

Then he came into power. And nothing much changed. And he suited up and went on international tours like Mbeki. And he seemed to be a pretty jovial fellow at least, at least he seemed to be getting on with people. And putting those commies in their place a bit, ha! (We are still worries about this, but so far so good). And this whole wives thing, well, it is a bit disturbing to us... but it is culture, we suppose. We probably shouldn't mess with that too much. Still, we disapprove. But he's looking pretty snappy in his suit. And at least we have moved past that AIDS denialism debacle. And he has made some good noises about getting serious about fighting crime... so, okay.

Then there is the love child scandal. Shocking. But... we already knew him to be lecherous. A one night stand with a lady young enough to be his daughter. Rape or not, this labelled him as the kind of man who was into one night stands with ladies young enough to be his daughter. And them he got married again TWICE. Good grief. So by the time the love child came along, it was just more of what we had become used to from our president, in this area of his life. Not that we approve, we just weren't shocked anymore.

What happened? Something surely unprecedented in recent South African history - an event white people didn't have much to say about. Sure, we disapproved. Then we lost interest.

So something happened that *never* happens - there was almost no outraged public white voice on this issue!

Which opened the door for something else quite exciting - an outraged public black voice.

Normally in South Africa the outraged black voice is predominantly private. The media and other public spaces are reserved for defense against the loud white voice.

But this time, things changed. Which is rather fantastic, I think.

I would explain further, but I expect that you know what I mean. :)

This was all illustrated beautifully in an M&G article today, where an anonymous ANC NEC has this to say:

"Said the NEC source: "We first thought it was a private matter. But we were surprised that the outcry did not come from white people or foreign media, but from our African constituency. They must vote for us to stay in power and we must listen to them.

"We realised that we need to change our approach or it will cost us in the 2011 local elections and beyond.

"We really want the president to zip up and make sure this doesn't happen again. If it does, it's over. We have nothing left to defend his conduct."






(*) Not my personal opinion!