I’m no Mugabe, says Jacob Zuma
Many will remember Jacob Zuma as the former Deputy President of the ANC, but most will remember him as the man who went on trial for rape, and during the course of the proceedings admitted that he had not used a condom even though he KNEW the woman was HIV positive. (This from the former Deputy President of a country which has among the worst HIV/AIDS statistics in the world!). He was cleared of those charges, and he was also recently cleared of charges of corruption. Zuma is a controversial figure.
The Sunday Telegraph (UK) recently carried an article featuring an interview with him (via The Fishbowl). It wasn’t the controversy which caught my eye, it was his choice of language when he rejected comparisions between himself and another controversial (to put it mildly) figure; namely, Robert Mugabe.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph before addressing a rally in Durban, Mr Zuma, 64, rejected comparisons with the Zimbabwean leader.
“As a member and a leader of the ANC all I do is carry out ANC policies,” he said. “How could you have an individual who would become such a monster? The ANC system does not allow for that kind of thing.”
So we have a senior figure in the ANC calling Robert Mugabe a monster. But any hope we might feel is quickly squashed by equivocation:
Mr Zuma said he could not give “a yes or no answer” to whether he supported Mugabe but made clear his sympathy for the view that Britain is to blame for the crisis in Zimbabwe, because it did not live up to its promises to fund land reform.
But if Mugabe is blameless, why the choice of the word monster?
The beginning of the title also jumped out at me - ‘I’m no Mugabe [...] - it reminded me of Mugabe saying “I’m no Idi Amin” a few years ago.
I wonder if Zuma used those words at all? Regardless, the moral outrage of these dubious characters makes me laugh. I wonder if there’s some kind of ‘monster’ scale in their minds that they measure themselves against - the Despot 100 Ranking. Mugabe looks to Amin and says “I’m no Amin”, but who does Amin look to? Zuma looks to Mugabe and says “I’m no Mugabe”, but who looks to Zuma and says “I’m no Zuma”?
Bessie Head, in her wonderful book Maru, writes a scorching paragraph on racial prejudice and ‘monster’ ranking:
Before the white man became universally disliked for his mental outlook, it was there. The white man found only too many people who looked different. That was all that outraged the receivers of his discrimination, that he applied the technique of the wild jiggling dance and the rattling cans to anyone who was not a white man. And if the white man thought that Asians were a low, filthy nation, Asians could still smile with relief–at least, they were not Africans. And if the white man thought that Africans were a low filthy nation, Africans in South Africa could still smile–at least, they were not Bushmen. They all have their monsters.
Seems politicians have their monsters too, and maybe they want us to make allowances for them because they can say ‘at least I’m not [fill in the name of another despot of your choosing]‘.
Sorry guys, you’ll be judged for who YOU ARE, not for WHO YOU ARE NOT. You’d be well advised to remember that!
November 30th, 2006 04:04
Well put.
It scares me that this man (Jacob Zuma) stll stands a very good chance of becoming the next President of South Africa.
We need another NELSON MANDELA.
April 21st, 2008 20:40
The Writer - Sokwanele
You seem to suggest that White People seem to hold some kind of mental high ground. This is utter rubbish.A nation that believed for along time that non white South Africans used their skin to think and had no brain you sure seem to have got it wrong.Insofar as Jacob Zuma is concerned,we are all convinced that he made errors but to spend every waking moment trying to convict him is a sheer waste of time and money.Think about it every white businesman during apartheid would only give you business if you gave him either money or whatever he, ever so sly, asked for. Are you going to convict all of them?No you are not.
The problem with Comrade Mugabe is that he took the moral high ground and defeated that barbaric ruler Ian Smith, now he believes he owns Zimbabwe. When you compare him with Comrades Steve Biko,Madiba,Billy Nair etc they too fought off monsters like Botha,de Klerk etc BUT they did not believe that they owned South Africa.
If events have to improve in South Africa or zimbabwe all of us must move away from a Black/White mentality and stop being so damn personal.
Cheers
Donald Mathray Perumal
April 21st, 2008 21:04
On the contrary, the extract from Bessie Head makes exactly the opposite point to the one you have arrived at. As a writer who had one black parent and the other white, she had a unique perspective on racial prejudice and would be the last to judge. I don’t think we’ve harped on about the topic of Zuma and his past either - the post was written in 2006.