As I write this, I’m sitting on my cranky old couch watching Jacob Zuma defend himself against questioning from an astute journalist who has taken a line of questioning that questions his relationship with one currently incarcerated Schabir Shaik, among other issues that form the image of the new president of the African National Congress.
Mr Zuma is trying very hard to defend himself against the questioning, which follows the line that his relationship with the aforementioned jail/private hospital dweller could bring about his political demise.
A thin layer of phlegm has formed itself at the corners of Zuma’s mouth, which betrays that the man has done much talking and spirited defending of his political image and his stance on a plethora of issues. He looks exhausted, though he tries to hide it; it has been a long, taxing week for the man who would have surely known his fate after the Polokwane conference even before he set foot on the reportedly lavish motorcade that took him there.
He surely must have prepared himself for the barrage of questions, detractions and mocking that he would receive from the so-called community — or, as it has been made clear to me, non-Zuma-ists. Try to restrain yourself from calling me a tribalist, racist or an uneducated pig-headed Zulu, as I’m sure you are itching to do, and let me explain.
You see, it has been a few days since the presidency of the ANC has been decided along with the other top positions in the party. In those few days I have done enough in defence of the new president of the ANC to earn me a healthy salary, as I’m sure such positions as official spokesperson to Jacob Zuma would command, but unfortunately I haven’t received a single cent in payment. Nor do I say I deserve or have had any agreement from the president of the ANC to speak on his behalf.
No, the spokespersonship for Zuma is a honorary position that has been forcibly bestowed upon my person by all Zuma’s detractors, worried liberals and economists, nationalists and most other non-Zulus whom I have had the misfortune to have within a 3m radius in the past two days.
This is not a new phenomenon to me, by the way. I have experienced such treatment before in my life and to a similar extent, though not from a population of this magnitude. You see, in 1994 when the ANC came into power, I was well into my multiracial (white) education. I was deep into the system, working my way through the mid-grades as one of the experimental lab-rat blacks used to test the theory that all races in South Africa could co-exist and successfully so within an integrated education system.
This is where my unofficial spokespersonship for all black people began. As a 12-year-old, I was forced to field all sorts of questions about the future of our country and the changes that the ANC would make to the Constitution, and what would become of white people when the new dispensation took hold. Being the nice young man that I was, and lucky for those young impressionable white kids, I assured all of them that the ANC did not mean to drive their families into the sea or burn them at the stake.
I assured them that, in fact, the ANC wanted nothing but peaceful co-existence and freedom for all. I made all those assurances during the day and after school attended junior ANC meetings at the Number Sixteen Primary School, also known as Khethamahle Primary School, where we would sing freedom songs and were prepared mentally by the local structures for the strife that might have arisen after or leading up to the first free elections in April 1994.
Fortunately, and as I had assured my school mates, they did not need the six months’ supply of All Gold Baked Beans that their parents had stashed in bunkers and basements in preparation for the impending war that they believed would surely break out as the barbarians took over the country and turned it into a war zone.
The positive developments at the back of the elections came as a very welcome relief for me. I was glad that I did not have to pick up an AK-47 as a child soldier and go after one of my best mates’ family and end all their lives and thereafter drive the rest of the surviving whites into the sea — as I had been assured by my mate that this would exactly be the series of events that “my people” would follow in their attempt to take everything that belonged to “us”, as he put it.
I did not have all the answers, as you can imagine, and much of the information I used to calm the nerves of my agitated white counterparts was derived from myth, legend and fabrications. I wasn’t entirely sure that we wouldn’t drive my mate’s family into the sea — but as I said before, we didn’t, so everything worked out just fine and we remained friends for a long time before our in-bred and taught prejudices grew greater with our age and we just steered apart.
I had not felt the need again to defend a position or a person I was not even sure I endeared until after the results of the voting for the ANC president were announced on Tuesday evening. Oh, wait, I lie; during the much-publicised and, some would argue, sensationalised rape trial of Zuma, I was once again called upon to defend “my culture” against all sorts of inquisitors on behalf of the former deputy president of South Africa, a Zulu, as I also am. My inquisitors were adamant that the sins of the shower should be defended by the Sumo and all other Zulus.
At least while it was still speculation that Zuma would be elected president of the ANC, all I had to deal with was a generally “what if?” line of questioning, which was easy to wave off with a stern “I do not know, please leave me to devour my pork chops, mash and gravy in peace!” Now that the man has been chosen to sit at the head of the political party that leads the country, I have been ordained Zuma’s unofficial spokesperson much against my will.
To the non-blacks: I, an African male of KwaZulu-Natal origin, am a staunch Zuma supporter — and possibly financial backer, for all they know. I surely attend all of Zuma’s political functions; I write his political stance documents on all the matters in which a man of his position would engage himself. I’m not just part of the inner circle; I’m at the epicentre, discussing and dictating the PR stance “we” should take on all the “attacks” brought about on the honourable Mr Jacob Zuma. For all the non-blacks and now even the non-Zulus know, I was present and participated in every allegedly shady deal of which the man has been accused. Without trial, I too am guilty and should, by their reckoning, rightly answer for my (our) actions with regard to such matters.
In the past couple of days, I too have been left with phlegm at the corners of my mouth trying to explain to all my accusers that, actually, being a Zulu and being within 3m of you gives you (the non-black/non-Zulu) no right to question me on the new president of the ANC. Contrary to what seems like conventional wisdom, Zulus are not telepathic; we do not magically know what each and every one of us is thinking; and we do not operate in a mob. We are free individuals and free thinkers who are not connected by some magical thread that binds us to the same belief system or behaviour.
Ultimately, all I’m trying to say is that people should refrain from looking for critical, sensitive information from anyone who has anything that vaguely represents the people from whom they seek answers. You are asking the right questions to the wrong people from whom you will probably get a series of wrong answers. For example:
The above are just some of the questions I’ve had to answer on behalf of Zuma. Where possible, I have dismissed my inquisitors with a nasty look — believed by many to be typically Zulu — of “I’ll beat you and I won’t stop until you start bleeding”, but some have persevered and I have had to refer them the ANC website for answers, or have told them to wait for Zuma to address a sitting in their area so they could ask him themselves.
I do understand, though, that people are worried. Change is uncomfortable at the best of times and with a seemingly widening abyss between the two “camps” of the ANC, I don’t blame them. But they must keep in mind that nothing can be done to ease their fears when the right people do not know they have those fears to begin with.
Disturbing my double-cheese-bacon-and-avocado burger-munching at the canteen to ask me about Zuma’s future policies should he become president of the country is going to do little more than piss me off, and it isn’t going to benefit you much either. Also confronting me in a corridor on my way back from the canteen and bribing me with French fries and a large Coke and asking me what I think about “your man Zuma’s victory” is not the way to engage in healthy discourse to tackle these matters.
South Africans, all South Africans, are a strong people, a nation of survivors and hardship-hardened individuals who as a collective can withstand the hardest of situations. We will get through this too, if there is ultimately anything to get through, and we will again prosper if our prosperity is stunted by these new developments (which I doubt).
Misinformation is the key enemy here, whether deliberate or otherwise. We need to stay informed and open our minds to what people say, not play slave to our predetermined misconceptions. So please, let’s give each other a break; being Zulu does not make me Zuma’s unofficial spokesperson, I’m at the bar to drink beer, not to deliver a speech on behalf of the new president of the African National Congress.
I rest
The Sumo
A prince with dignity and determination
Prince Ngarambe’s goals are to become Rwanda’s first transgender model and to uplift the country’s youth
The EFF’s principles are unshakeable
Unlike the ANC, the core values of the freedom fighters do not change with each leader it elects
