Why SA enjoys Zuma

Jeremy Gordin The Sunday Independent October 19th 2008

In almost every historical account in
which Jacob Zuma features, even peripherally, he is portrayed as intelligent,
brave, committed and exceptionally pleasant.

I am referring to accounts that can be found in six major works by skilled
and perceptive journalists, a historian, a judge and a lawyer.

They range from the memoir by Albie Sachs of how apartheid regime operatives
blew off his arm and destroyed his eye (The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom
Fighter, 1990); veteran journalist Allister Sparks’s “inside story”
of South Africa’s “negotiated revolution” (Tomorrow Is Another
Country, 1994); and Patti Waldmeir’s tale of the end of apartheid and the
birth of the new South Africa (Anatomy of a Miracle, 1997).

Chronologically,
these were followed by historian Luli Callinicos’s biography of Oliver Tambo
(Beyond the Engeli Mountains, 2004); Mark Gevisser’s biography of Thabo Mbeki (The Dream Deferred, 2007); and lawyer
Peter Harris’ remarkable story of the Delmas four (In a Different Time,
2008).

Why, then, does one encounter such a high level of irrational hostility from
so many people towards Zuma, the ANC President and future president of South
Africa?

Why does the man, perceived by clever observers to be intelligent, brave,
committed and so on, suddenly have horns, as well as a shower head, growing
out of his skull?

Many people would reply that one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to
understand why people dislike Zuma.

They would say that, in return for helping Schabir Shaik with his business
endeavours, Zuma apparently took money from him; that he had unprotected sex
with an HIV-positive woman and said foolish things during his ensuing rape
trial; and that, despite claiming to want “his day in court”, he’s
done his damnedest to stay away from being tried in connection with Shaik and
French arms company Thint.

They would also say that Zuma is implicated in arms deal calumny; that his
main supporters are bright-red lefties who will do appalling things to our
economy; that “Zuma’s ANC” viciously attacked the judiciary and the
principle of “equality before the law”; and that, in a dastardly
move, “his” ANC recalled former president Thabo
Mbeki.

Let’s take a minute and consider whether there exist rational refutations of
these “charges” – or, at any rate, answers that are different to
the usual indignation.

·
Taking money from a comrade who has promised to help you through a
difficult time is not necessarily proof of corruption; it is definitely not
proof of corruption until a judge of the high court finds it so. And, given
the type of person Zuma seems to be, and the kind of the relationship he had
with the Shaiks, even if no money had been involved, he would probably have
helped Shaik in his business dealings anyway.

·
There is no law against having intercourse without a condom with an
HIV-positive person. More to the point, Zuma said in court that he knew full
well that there was a very slim chance of a male contracting HIV if he had
intercourse once only with an HIV-positive woman. Besides, it is not our
business what two adults decide to do privately.

·
As for some of the allegedly silly things Zuma said in court – that
the woman in question was signalling a sexual interest in him and that he
washed after they had intercourse to lessen the chances of infection – these
remarks were made in a particular context (cross-examination) and they have
undoubtedly been taken out of context ad nauseam to mock Zuma.

The hard truth is that if you hold some of the attitudes held by males of a
certain generation, and a young woman opts to spend the evening in your house
wearing a kanga sans underwear, you might assume that she is interested in a
little dalliance. Secondly, ever since Florence Nightingale discovered that
hygiene helped prevent death, we are all inclined to believe that soap and
hot water defeat germs.

·
Zuma did in fact have “his day in court” – in September
2006, in Pietermaritzburg. You can’t blame Zuma if Judge Herbert Msimang
struck the case off the roll. Why should Zuma have to keep going back to court?
In addition, as Judge Chris Nicholson pointed out in September, there has
been so much interference in the prosecutorial process over the years that
the case against Zuma is hopelessly tainted.

·
Zuma might be guilty, as the state claims, of getting money from Shaik
companies, which were involved in the arms deal, and/or from a bribe paid by
Thint, which was in a joint venture with Shaik. But, notwithstanding the huge
growth industry seeking to tie Zuma to “the arms deal”, none of
that money, even in the state’s version, came from the treasury or the
taxpayer’s pocket. What then is Zuma’s connection with “the arms
deal”?

·
Many of Zuma’s staunchest supporters are leaders of the communist
party and Cosatu. So what? Is it not time we realised that whatever positives
have emerged from the Mbeki government’s fiscal policies (and there have been
many for the wealthy), the poor have grown poorer. Maybe it would not be a
calamity to consider other, more socialist ways of running the economy.

·
The leaders of the post-Polokwane ANC did attack the judiciary. They
could not understand why the courts could not see what they saw: that the
prosecution of Zuma was politically inspired and that therefore the principle
of “equality before the law” was being flouted in Zuma’s case. I am
not saying they were correct, though Nicholson thought they were.

·
The ANC is a political party, many of whose members were, or are,
seasoned politicos and trade unionists whose modus operandi is to apply
pressure publicly to get what they want. It’s called politics. And, although
the courts and judges should be respected, they don’t have to be mollycoddled
more than anyone else or any other institution.

· The post-Polokwane ANC leadership – and it
would be disingenuous to pretend Zuma was not involved – fired Mbeki because
Nicholson’s comments confirmed what they had long suspected, but also because
they had wanted to fire him for a long time, for all the reasons the majority
of ANC delegates did not re-elect him to the ANC presidency.

But even if one tries to argue rationally about the “charges”
against Zuma, the hostility – a dislike that has no rational basis -
continues against him.

So I return to my original question: why is there such a high level of
irrational hostility towards Zuma?

There are a few answers, including the simplest one: after 12 years in power
and with a top-heavy leadership, the ANC has unsurprisingly split into
different camps and the people in the non-Zuma camps don’t like Zuma.

And, obviously, this has not been helped by the way his saga has played out
in the public eye. Anthony Butler, the biographer of Cyril Ramaphosa,
remarked dryly: “Post-apartheid political biography has mostly presented
a procession of saints. Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, great
and tough-minded political leaders, have been rendered as cuddly as teddy
bears.”

There might be some people who think Zuma is cuddly but every one knows,
after the past few years, that he’s not a saint.

Whites (those who have not met him) also find Zuma threatening because he
comes from a world that is different to theirs. Nelson Mandela also comes
from another world. But some of his closest colleagues and friends are white,
and, above all, whites were never allowed to feel unwelcome on his watch.

Mbeki is, or came to be portrayed as, aloof and cold and he has often played
the race card. But he has a master’s degree in economics from an English
university, he is the son of a venerable ANC leader, he speaks and practises
capitalism and he seems at home hobnobbing with world leaders.

Zuma, on the other hand, is often seen at political rallies in the company of
men perceived to be hotheads – Zwelinzima Vavi of Cosatu, Blade Nzimande of
the South African Communist Party, not to mention the “big mouths”
from the ANC Youth League – none of whom are cuddly, nor much interested in
being ingratiating to whites.

But, above all, Zuma and “his” ANC represent a deviation from our
national myth.

A national myth is defined as “an inspiring narrative about a nation’s
past”. And ours, as hinted at in Butler’s
comment, is that our modern founding fathers are saints and that the end of
apartheid and the birth of the new South Africa was a miracle.

Perhaps it is not entirely a myth; Mandela does have saintly attributes. But
we have exaggerated them, turning him into “an icon”. And, by
extension, the whole of the ANC and its struggle for power has been
transformed from just any “liberation army”, whose leaders made
mistakes and sometimes didn’t, and just any “war of liberation”
into something glorious and lofty.

But the reality is that, although many ANC leaders have been brave,
idealistic and strong, they have not been saints.

Any brief, unsentimental journey through the history of the struggle and the
ANC reveals this. They have been, and are, human beings – no more and no
less.

It is easy to wax lyrical about what happened in the early 1990s and
immediately afterwards. But the negotiated revolution, as Sparks called it, was more about both sides
making pragmatic decisions than it was about revolution.

This is not to diminish the astuteness and level-headedness of Mandela, Cyril
Ramaphosa and Mbeki, as well as the internal revolt of many ordinary (and
extraordinary) South Africans, going back to Sharpeville in 1960, Soweto in
1976 and including trade union and United Democratic Front activities in the
1980s.

Nor is it to belittle the example set by exceptionally brave and committed
people such as Mac Maharaj and Zuma, who put their lives on hold for the
struggle.

It is merely to say that what happened in South Africa wasn’t a miracle. It
was a wonderful achievement by human beings; and human beings, who make
mistakes and have flaws, are not saints.

When the grande dame of the ANC, Frene Ginwala, sat on the podium at
Polokwane, looking at the delegates who voted in Zuma and shouted down
Mosiuoa Lekota, and she thought to herself (or so it seemed to me) that
“this group of reprobates does not represent the ANC of Tambo or
Mandela”, she was both right and wrong.

She was right because it was not the ANC of Tambo or Mandela – or of Mbeki.
It had changed because the country and circumstances had changed and they,
the ANC delegates, had changed.

And yet she was wrong because it was indeed the ANC of Tambo, Mandela and
Mbeki – but it was the ANC as it had evolved during the past 10 years.

Zuma has also perforce changed because of the investigation into his affairs
and because he was fired from his job. He has been fighting for his political
life and to stay out of jail. That’s enough to make anyone move on from
playing the role of an auxiliary saint.

But, just as we don’t like change, we don’t like deviations from our national
myth. It’s frightening and makes us dislike those whom we hold responsible.

Jeremy Gordin is the author of Zuma: A Biography, which is due to be
published by Jonathan Ball next month