Admit it, we loved watching every minute of Jacob ‘News Cycle’ Zuma’s Harvey Dent year
The two thousand and eighteenth year after the birth of Jesus has been a long one. So long in fact that we’ve for the most part forgotten how SA’s most newsworthy citizen broke the news cycle and had an entire country watching nothing happen for a full year. We can pretend all we want but the truth is that Jacob Zuma was the year’s most googled person, and it’s easy to see why.
Let’s rewind to the beginning of the year. SA was its usual crazy self. We’d been complaining for a few years but that’s something we like to do. Nothing was out of the ordinary until January 8. That was the day Jacob “News Cycle” Zuma was booed at an ANC event in East London. It wasn’t the first time he was booed but it was the moment when everyone smelt blood.
Before then we had all assumed that he would dodge charges like Neo dodged bullets in The Matrix.
As the year moved forward Jacob “Thixo Wase George Goch” Zuma would prove a popular urban saying true: It be your own n**gas. By April the political wheels were machinating and future President Cyril and his cronies were knee-deep in executing their plan. Zuma was going to go whether he liked it or not. Anyone who laboured under the illusion that he was stupid or would go down without a fight was wildly mistaken.
Not long after Easter, Jacob “I dance like an elderly Chris Brown” Zuma showed his entertainment value, holding the entire country hostage as we wondered whether or not he would torpedo SA’s most storied political organisation. It was a season finale worthy of the Kardashians.
In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent says: “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” This was Zuma’s Harvey Dent year, the year when a former struggle hero outstayed his welcome and saw himself become the bad guy. And we can say what we want but South Africans have loved watching every minute of that.