Polygamy revived, but to what end?

I attended a TV talk show recently where they debated the morality of polygamy. I was on the panel because I had written a piece on polygamy in January last year. The blog got tongues wagging. It was subsequently, and maybe more eloquently, covered by respected social commentators like the irrepressible Ndumiso Ngcobo, among others.

When I saw the ad for the popular SABC1 show, which airs on Sundays, I wondered why all of a sudden a man who is married to more than one, willing, wife within the institution of marriage supported and protected by our Constitution should get so much focus in the current social climate. Are people genuinely opposed to the practice or is there a deeper, darker meaning to all these developments? Let us explore this further.

There are two prominent polygamists that antagonists to this practice constantly refer to and make the target of their ridicule. These two gentlemen are traditional leaders, one is within our borders and the other is a neighbour who is usually clad in what resembles a red kanga and has a penchant for young brides. I cannot help but feel the reason there is such an outcry these days is to ridicule Jacob Zuma.

I read a funny comment in the Sunday Times (ST) yesterday. A reader said the ST should all together stop printing the name Jacob Zuma on their publication because it seems that his name appears on every single page of the ST. He proceeded to proclaim that should this name be cut out from all text printed onto paper this would result in less trees being cut down for the purposes of producing paper, thereby reducing the impact of deforestation on our planet.

I laughed, then explored this gentleman’s options and felt pity on him because this is one name he will not be able to get away from in a hurry it would seem, especially since every aspect of the man’s life is so closely scrutinised and publicised — then opened for ridicule whenever possible.

But my point is that the timing is just too convenient to be a coincidence and his name has been mentioned during some of these debate sessions and in the press in relation to him practising his constitutional right to be a polygamist. It could be one of two things:

1. Zuma is such a dominant force in your life, like him or not, that anything that remotely has to do with him will affect you therefore it should be debated publicly and its merits tested resulting in it being highlighted and brought to the attention of those that can do something about it in order to benefit the masses who might be adversely affected by this particular part of his character.

2. It is another attempt to publicly humiliate and discredit him ahead of the elections in an attempt to erode his support and dominance of the ANC in South African politics or to paint him as a less desirable candidate for the presidency in and outside the ANC, placing the current president in a better position to take the top job.

These are just some of the options and no one can reduce these as being the hallucinations of one obese individual. But the latter is so boring and overdone and is really not worth exploring further since it is quite normal, in my opinion, for politicians to bad-mouth each other in public in order to gain advantage over their opponents through public ridicule. Unfortunately it works.

But the former is quite interesting. Is the man’s influence, positive or not, so strong that he will dictate what it is that you talk about inside your own home, in your living room, at the dinner table and do you still believe that this man has no power, is a brute and unintelligent, unsophisticated old-fashioned leader, a well-coordinated gyrating fool who should not be president under any circumstances, a philanderer and a fraud?

Yet he resides in your home and you keep inviting him into your life every day and you insist that he stays top of your mind. You discuss the economy in relation to how most of the educated minority aka experts believe he will balls it up. You discuss the judiciary and how you hold that he has corrupted it; you discuss the National Prosecuting Authority in relation to how you think he is singularly trying to shut it up so he will be able to get away from charges leveled against him. I wouldn’t be surprised if you will probably also link him in some manner to the global recession — I don’t know, maybe he sang a song and people started engaging in ill-advised economic practices — you will find a way.

You even go on rants about how base polygamy is and how someone who practises it should never be allowed to hold public office if he is going to be so preoccupied with acquiring new wives and planning weddings among his normal marital responsibilities which might already leave him rather spent because of the sheer size of such responsibility.

All of these observations lead me to think that Zuma could just BE South Africa right now, or at least South African politics, the quicker we accept this, the sounder we shall all sleep at night with our one or maybe two wives and maybe some of the other party’s can start actively and intensely developing their own manifestoes instead of anti-Zuma, anti-ANC rhetoric forming the foundation of our opposition.

I rest,
The Sumo