AS ZUMA LOSES HIS ‘MACHINE GUN…’
Witchcraft is when South Africans pray for Zuma to go, and the prayers are answered in Zimbabwe.” This was the trending quip in Harare at the end of last year when the crisis in Zimbabwe reached a crescendo and the country’s then president Robert Mugabe had to go.
By that time, the crisis in South Africa was several years old, but South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma, who was in apparently worse trouble than Mugabe, had tenaciously held on. After Mugabe’s departure, words were put in his mouth (as the social media always did), to wit: “Relax, I’m still President of Zimbabwe. But this time the letter ‘P’ is silent.” And so is Zuma today - (P)Resident of South Africa.
As the Hausa say, ‘Makashin-MazaMaza-Kan-Kash-Shi’ (literally ‘The Killer of Men is Killed by Men’ or, ‘those who live by the gun die by the gun’), the long-expected end of Zuma as South Africa’s president has arrived. Exactly as Zuma did to his former boss, gentleman president Thabo Mbeki, the African National Congress (ANC) has succeeded in removing what has been described as ‘the most cancerous growth on its body’.
Cyril Ramaphosa, anti-apartheid activist, trade union leader and businessman who was until Thursday morning Deputy President but ANC President, has been inaugurated as the fifth President of South Africa. It took a lot of pressure for Zuma to go, perhaps more pressure than that which sacked Mugabe next door. But ANC’s political maturity was again on display as it was a fully civilian affair, unlike in Zimbabwe where the military had to step in. Ramaphosa was voted in by the National Assembly where the ANC still holds the majority.
To the end, Zuma had remained adamant and militant. He never imagined that he could finally be sacked by the ANC because, truth be told, he was immensely popular in the ANC rank and file, perhaps only matched by Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nelson’s former wife. But it was good compensation that Zuma rose to be president - his Zulu ethnic national was historically intensely opposed to the ANC but Zuma never abandoned it. He never left. He never wavered.
And who could have been more militant than Zuma? Even as president, wherever he went he charged the crowds with the great anthem of the anti-apartheid struggle, Khawuleth’ Umshini Wam (Bring Me My Machine Gun). The anthem was first used by members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC during the struggle against apartheid. Its lyrics, rendered in English from the original Zulu, run: Please bring me my machine gun My machine gun, my machine gun Please bring me my machine gun My machine gun, my machine gun Please bring me my machine gun Please bring me my machine gun You’re pulling me back My machine gun Please bring my machine gun And he would dance to the anthem, sway to its lyrics, emphasise it words, stress the ‘stressables’. He epitomised everything that could be described as ‘the struggle’.
Almost exactly nine years ago, in May 2009, this Column announced the ‘political coup’ of Zuma against Mbeki, and how the former wiggled his way in the ANC to take over the party from his boss, and eventually take over the presidency. He had earlier on being sacked as Mbeki’s deputy president. It was intrigues galore - and the dramatis personae included the delectable Winnie Madikizela-Mandela who actually nominated Zuma for the office of president back in 2009.
Let me here revisit that nine-year old article published on this page at some length:
By the time you are reading this piece [May 2009], Jacob Zuma may have been inaugurated as South Africa’s fourth post-apartheid President. The country’s parliament elected Zuma, the African National Congress (ANC) leader, as President on Wednesday after he was nominated by Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s former wife, herself returning to parliament from the political wilderness. For the presidential vote in parliament, Zuma was challenged by Mvume Dandala of the Congress of the People, COPE, a breakaway party of ANC dissidents who rebelled when former President Thabo Mbeki was ousted in a party ‘coup’ last year.
Zuma, [then] 67, a selfproclaimed African traditional chief with several wives and many children, is a very colourful character, his alleged misdemeanours notwithstanding. Zuma’s formal education had ended in primary school, but he was sentenced to ten years on Robben Island, the prison ‘university’ of the anti-apartheid struggle, spending time with Mandela and other freedom fighters. Zuma had grown through the ranks of the ANC, starting from the youth league and the South African Communist Party (SACP), before becoming ANC President after defeating then President Mbeki at the party’s convention.
Zuma, Deputy President before he was sacked by Mbeki in 2005, has now completed a dramatic u-turn in his political fortunes. He has spent eight years in a battle against corruption and other charges that threatened to ruin him. Despite his political battles, Zuma had continued to remain relevant to those that mattered most in the ANC - youth, women, labour, the communists - because they saw in him a representative of what they stood for, the masses of South Africa.
In South Africa, and especially in the ANC, there has been an unspoken struggle between what one would call Country Mice and City Mice (what the Hausa call Beran Daji da Beran Birni). Whereas many of the well-attired and well-groomed ANC leaders (the City Mice, such as Mbeki) had been smuggled abroad to study in prestigious institutions to prepare them for leadership, many others (the Country Mice, such as Zuma) had been left largely at home to carry on the struggle. Most of these Country Mice, like Zuma, though unable to acquire functional education, had the advantage of being constantly in touch with the masses, and became good at organising.
Zuma, who said his ‘education’ was at the feet of the elders on Robben Island, became Mbeki’s deputy in 1999 when Mandela declined a second term. Zuma was riding on a crest of popularity as he had helped the ANC to win a near-victory in KwazuluNatal, once the stronghold of Mangosuthu