Zuma used peasant image to harvest riches and power

Ihave many friends who are peasants. In the Cederberg one or two own donkeys, in Portugal many drink red wine from tumblers, and almost all carry thumb-sized tins of Vaseline lip balm. But not a single one wears an Audemars Piguet rose-gold watch priced at nearly R800,000.

Jacob Zuma’s presidency has been little more than one man’s enjoyment in the unprecedented conviction and contagion of his status as victimised peasant. This was the deliberate foundation of his political personality and something he wore with impunity. By the time he was gifted — or bought — that watch, this project had reached the point of irreversible inference, disarming any intuition or symbolism. Zuma made a number of remarks that disgusted opposition parties and commentators. These ranged from statements made during his rape trial to how he addressed women in Venda and thoughts on homosexuality.

But it was in Parliament where he really succeeded in his peasant strategy, either by making up words such as “meandos” or by pronouncements and behaviour so poor and awkward that he embarrassed the opposition into submission. Once during a state of the nation address while talking about farming, he asked a young woman seated in the gallery to be upstanding, before introducing her. “She is now a farmer, but she was once a security.”

“A security.” It’s a myth, beloved by Zuma’s supporters, that mistakes like that are due to English not being his first language. I have heard him say the word “conflate” before; people who know how to apply the word “conflate” correctly do not use a decidedly peasant expression such as “she was once a security”.

Another example was his defence of his son Duduzane.

Duduzane is much more a peasant than his father; he loves white Puma shoes and being towed behind a boat on the Vaal River on a tractor tyre tube. But during one tense exchange Zuma declared aggressively that “his son went into business and there were reasons why his son had to go into business”. That is an extremely peasant thing to say, as it implies that his son was reluctantly hauled away from staring at cows grazing in a field all day to make bucket-loads of money.

The campaign’s success was evident in the conduct of the ANC in Parliament — how they gradually, then viciously, invested in Zuma the peasant — and in the conduct of his highprofile supporters. People such as Jimmy Manyi, a rapper called “AKA”, ANN7 anchor Sindy Mabe and the South African Revenue Service’s Luther Lebelo. Watching them leap to his defence was a phenomenon nothing short of a political craze.

You’d have to revisit England during the mid-18th and 19th centuries — men screaming out of their tenements in pursuit of settler colonialism — to find something as popular.

With this concept, Zuma turned his government into a gypsy camp in rural Bulgaria. Because, despite the imminent commission of inquiry into state capture, which is virtually guaranteed to result in criminal prosecutions; despite the raids in the Free State; the US Federal Bureau of Investigation wading in; and SA’s reputation being trashed in the House of Lords weekly, you still have people such as Ace Magashule and Jessie Duarte unfazed by the prospect of being caught on the wrong side of history. Not just unfazed — apparently sprinting towards it. You’re not just witnessing the unravelling of a disastrous premiership, but the end of one of the most successful political propaganda campaigns yet conceived. I mean that in the most unkind way.

No other president comes close to the influence cast by a single idea. Mandela’s forgiveness and Mbeki’s renaissance pale in comparison to Zuma’s peasant.