Before insulting Zuma, pause to ask why

SHOCK and horror are words that spring to mind regarding radio personality Ravi Govender’s provocative social media post insulting President Jacob Zuma.

Has nobody learnt how one daft tweet from Justine Sacco ruined her life?

Then there was Penny Sparrow, who led thousands to march through her town and personally had to cough up for a hefty fine.

More recently, Dawie Kriel received a klap from the court for his racist fantasy.

Not to mention Helen Zille, who riled an entire nation and more than a handful in the DA with her social media misbehaviour.

With no stakes to play for, political or otherwise, it’s mindboggling that Govender would risk so much for a few Facebook likes or inane comments.

Perhaps Govender’s aberration is something more deep-seated which found expression in what he mistakenly believed to be a safe space.

Adding insult to injury are the mainly Indian racists who have found their voices and have been adding to the drivel.

The president is not a figure of universal acclaim, but he does not deserve the ugly descriptions Govender assigned to him; nor does our neighbour up north, President Robert Mugabe.

It is worth unpacking a few things for Govender’s edification.

Zuma’s lack of formal education was not a conscious choice. He is the product of a vicious settler colonial system that robbed people of their land to force them into a cycle of migrant labour.

That system tore apart the African family and social system.

Consigned to an infinite poverty, what remained of the African family had to eke out an existence on the periphery of the racist, capitalist state minus land and schooling.

Zuma’s upbringing and early life mirror the experience of millions of black South Africans. It is an experience to which his white, coloured and Indian compatriots have been largely oblivious.

Does anyone care to ask where their helpers or gardeners come from or what trials and tribulations have forced them into domestic servitude?

Do those more privileged on account of skin colour care to interrogate the colonial and apartheid processes that enabled them to obtain a better education than their African compatriots?

All things are not equal in our country and the past cannot be consigned to history so that we can move on.

One must be constantly reminded that we have come out of a tortured history and that far from fixing one of the most unequal societies in the world, we see inequality growing.

There is a groundswell of anger against this inequality and it is a tide that we appear singularly ill-equipped to modify. Fifty or sixty years ago, Zuma too was consumed by such an anger.

Instead of being cowed into submission, he chose to take up arms against the oppressive system.

His reward was a lengthy period of imprisonment on Robben Island, followed by even more years in exile. It was in prison that fellow prisoners taught him to read and write.

Instead of being held up as uneducated, his triumph over his personal circumstances should be celebrated and serve to inspire those who hunger for an education as a ticket out of disempowerment.

The experience of prison and exile also taught Zuma to communicate in more languages than the vast majority of his compatriots.

It is safe to assume Govender is monolingual in a colonial language that is not his mother tongue. Zuma does not have that handicap. He may speak a particular South African variant of English, but it is perfectly intelligible to all except the bizarre purist in Govender.

Our country faces huge challenges. Rampant corruption and the abuse of state resources not dissimilar to what happened under apartheid are heightening those challenges. Politicians are built to take the heat, but thoughtless insults hurt more than just the target. Govender needs to make amends. Time is running out.