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!

Blog Post of the Day

I was going to write a post about Gadhafi and his female bodyguards (it's true! I will blog about it tomorrow!) but I just found this most fantastic blog entry that I will share instead:

In defense of Jacob Zuma.

It is incredibly informative.

I tried earlier in the year to figure out what actually happened with the Zuma trial(s) over the years, by wading through online news articles. Which was a bit of a pain really, hacking my way through the search function on iol.co.za and mg.co.za. It was not particularly illuminating either.

But the blog post above is fantastic. And I'm only half way through reading it
:)

Drama in East London

I was in EL last week for the ANC election manifesto extravaganza. The whole town was abuzz... cars like the one in the picture above and ANC posters on all of the streetlights.

I went to the election manifesto launch on Saturday, which was an experience and a half. My brother and I were dropped off in a car park a few blocks away from the stadium and we walked to stadium from there, following the crowds. Unfortunately I was too skaam to take pictures of the event itself... I felt rather conspicuous being the only white person (alongside my brother) I saw there, and taking out my camera and taking photos seemed like it might be pushing my luck. I took one or two surreptitiously on my cellphone though:


The event started at 9 or 10 am (different posters advertised different starting times) but I'm told people were arriving at 6am... and I think many out of town people were bussed in and arrived the pervious day, or in the wee hours of the morning. The formal televised speeches were to start at around 11 so my bro and I arrived at about 10:30. And made our way to the stadium, as I said.

It took me about half an hour to realise the stadium we were in was actually the OVERFLOW stadium! In East London the rugby stadium is right next to the athletics stadium thingy. We were on the athletics field, watching the speakers on those big screens you can see in the picture above. I was looking around to see where they were actually speaking from, thinking the stage might face another part of the stadium. Till I realised the actual event was happening in the ABSA rugby stadium next door! People were pretty packed into the athletics stadium, so I can only imagine what the rugby stadium must have been like. So it is a pity I missed out on being in the main stadium - but maybe for the best!

But anyway, it was very worthwhile. I got to see Julius Malema semi-live, up to his new "selling South Africa to the British" antics (shame I actually felt for him, he was given about 3 minutes to speak, before the proceedings went live! I think he must be persona non grata in the ANC at the moment), Vavi (eish boring), Nzimande (charismatic, lots of "amandla"-ing), Zuma (mshini wam!) and a couple of other speakers. But mostly it was nice just to be there and catch the vibe. And get horribly sunburned.

And maybe the best part of it all was that my brother, who I draaaaged to come along with me, said it really gave him food for thought.

On TV we often see snippets of events like these, and it always seems like angry scary chaotic yellow-T-shirt people shouting. Which is so bad really, because it wasn't like that at all. But let me not begin a tirade against the media, I'm beginning to sound like an ANCYL ;)

Come now

The ANC saying it will rule till Jesus returns? that was pretty dumb. Arrogant. But not blasphemous. I don't think so anyway.

I watched a Journeyman Pictures documentary about Zuma a week or so ago. They interviewed, among others, some people from his home area. And one of them claimed that the Devil was behind all of JZ's probems.

A couple of days ago Ace Magashule, leader of the Free State ANC, claimed that JZ has been suffering in a similar way to Jesus: persecuted, insulted, betrayed (IOL article here).

The ID and the ACDP have taken exception to this, the Magashule comment in particular (here and here).

I'm a Christian, but I don't think any of the above comments were blasphemous. Do you?

I do think then can be manipulative. Definately. A large number of South Africans are Christians, so Biblical methaphor is meaningful to them. And using Biblical metaphor gives the speaker (and organisation!) an air of righteousness. He is using the Bible in his speech, it must be Godly. That sort of thing. People may not think it out exactly like that, but that is what they can come away with. Our great leaders, ordained by God, untouchable.

So yes, I think it can be manipulative. But not blasphemous.

When people made a fuss about it, Magashule responded that he was a Christian and that he wasn't comparing Zuma to Jesus, just the circumstance Zuma is in. Which I think is completely reasonable.

If anything, I think the man who blamed Zuma's troubles on the Devil was a bit more worrying. Especially because his next comments were "the strength of the Zulu nation is being tested through him" and "he was born to lead."

Goodness. I wonder if lots of people think that?