Lessons to be learnt from Zuma and Trump
In a 2016 episode of The Daily Show — a US late-night talk and satirical news television programme — the celebrated South African comedian and host, Trevor Noah, once debuted a segment he called “Donald Trump: America’s first African president”. The clip compared the ramblings of a Trump who was then considered a distracting, unserious and unlikely presidential candidate, with the presidential addresses of Jacob Zuma, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Yahya Jammeh, among others. Noah joked that while US critics may consider Trump to be an unpresidential contender for the nation’s highest office, he would be very much at home in the presidential palaces of South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Gambia.
The eight-minute segment featured images of Trump wearing increasingly ornate military regalia featuring epaulettes, medals and sunglasses, and ran under the satirical news headline “Trump & African leaders: Orange is the new black”, while a smiling Noah quipped that “Trump is presidential; he’s just running on the wrong continent.”
Though some may consider Noah’s analysis prescient given the events of the intervening eight years in US and international politics, it was both offensive and inaccurate to suggest that autocracy, delusion and narcissism are traits that are unique to heads of government on the African continent.
Worse, it reinforced a sense of immunity to the dangers of populism and anti-democratic governance among the political pundits and leaders of the West; an exceptionalism which has since been roundly proved false, first by the election of Trump himself, and then by the succession of autocrats, despots and antidemocratic heads of state who have acceded to power in Europe over the last decade.
This is a pity, because in today’s climate of dangerous threats to the primacy of democratic government, there are deeply salient and important comparisons to be made between the character and leadership of Trump and Zuma. These similarities have been placed in particularly stark relief in 2024 as both failed former heads of state obstinately seek re-election to political office despite the criminal charges and convictions hanging over their heads.
In South Africa, Zuma is appealing to the electoral court to set aside the unanimous ruling by the Electoral Commission (IEC) preventing him from appearing on the candidate lists for the 2024 general election. The IEC has rightly barred Zuma’s candidature, relying on the constitution’s section 47 disqualification of “anyone who ... is convicted of an offence and sentenced to more than 12 months imprisonment without the option of a fine”, following his conviction for contempt of court in 2021.
In the US the Supreme Court last month overturned a ruling in Colorado’s highest court that Trump was ineligible to stand for elected office on the basis of the US constitution’s 14th amendment barring candidates from holding office anywhere in the country if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof...” This ruling was on the basis of Trump’s role in inciting an insurrection on January 6 2021, following his defeat at the polls by President Joe Biden in 2020.
These two former presidents share a profound contempt for the rule of law as it pertains to their political interests. Trump unlawfully refused to abide by the outcome of the 2020 elections just as Zuma refused to comply with a summons to appear before and testify in the judicial inquiry into state capture. Both incited and led treasonous insurrections in their names just six months apart
— Trump in January 2021 and Zuma in July the same year. And despite the deep wounds left by their actions — not least the 354 deaths resulting from the July riots — both men remain cynically unrepentant and resolute in their efforts to regain access to political power.
More chillingly, both men still command a significant political following — though Zuma’s is greatly reduced since his heyday. A Wall Street Journal poll published this week found that Trump “... is leading President Biden in six of the seven most competitive states in the 2024 election” .A BBC news headline last month called Zuma “the political wild card in South Africa’s election”, citing polls which suggested his nascent MK Party “... is making a huge impact, gaining around 13% of the national vote and 25% in the former president’s political heartland of KwaZulu-Natal”.
What does the enduring popularity of these two false prophets tell us about the state of our democracies on both sides of the Atlantic?
The modern discourse around democratic decline often points to autocratic leaders as the root cause while rarely allocating responsibility to the democrats. We need to ask ourselves why the current crop of leaders contesting for power leave voters willing to smash the whole system to pieces by voting for criminals and despots. We also have a duty to better introspect about the instances in which the democratic leaders of the status quo have failed their citizens, leaving the door open for populists and opportunists such as Trump and Zuma to take a second bite at the electoral cherry.