Low-key welcome for Dlamini-Zuma
DV quiet as presidential hopeful goes walkabout
IF THE reception ANC presidential hopeful, Nkosazana DlaminiZuma, received yesterday was anything to go by, she has a long way to go in convincing ANC members in the Eastern Cape she is a suitable replacement for President Jacob Zuma.
Dlamini-Zuma spent day two of her four-day Eastern Cape charm offensive walking about Duncan Village (DV) and addressing locals at a community hall.
Her door-to-door campaign in the densely populated neighbourhood received a lukearm response.
Some members of the community who gathered at the Duncan Village Youth Advisory Centre hall even thought that they were supposed to have been addressed by Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini.
For the former African Union Commission chairperson, the battle to win the hearts and minds of ANC supporters in the Eastern Cape has never been easy.
Her first attempt at it did not go off as planned when AmaXhosa King Mpendulo Sigcawu told her she was not “ready” to be president.
Today she will return to the king’s area of traditional jurisdiction, where she will go on a door-to-door campaign and attend a prayer service in Elliotdale under the Mbhashe municipality.
However, she is not due to meet King Sigcawu this time around.
Yesterday Dlamini-Zuma was invited by the ANC Women’s League in the province for what they said was their Molo Mmelwane campaign as she took to the Duncan Village Youth Advisory Centre to address an unenthusiastic crowd of about 500, most of whom were bused in.
Very few from the immediate neighbourhood appeared to take an interest in the event on their doorstep.
Her first stop had been a door-todoor walkabout at section D of the location dotted with shacks, with its leaking water pipes and illegal electricity connection cables lying all over the place, even across roads her convoy was travelling on.
For some in the busy Jabavu Street in Duncan Village, it was business as usual as if there was no presidential hopeful making a tour of their neighbourhood.
At the hall there were ululations and choreographed singing and dancing from the predominantly female crowd as she walked in.
There was even meagre applause from her own table as they tried to make up for an audience that seemed uninterested in an uninspiring speech.
Dlamini-Zuma’s address revolved around so-called “radical economic transformation” and was almost identical to the speech she delivered at the East London ICC at the SA Funeral Practitioners’ Association (Safpa) the night before.
The only difference yesterday was her condemnation of the senseless abduction and killing of women in the country.
Dlamini-Zuma said that for the scourge to end, men and women must work together and address the root causes that gave rise to patriarchy. “We must work together to fight violence against women, and men too must speak out against this and say ‘not in our name’,” said Dlamini-Zuma in an address which was largely in isiZulu.
“For this to be an effective fight we need to teach boy children from a young age not to beat up their sisters because that is where the problem starts.” —