ZUMA’S POLITICAL STRATEGY: THE WARFARE NARRATIVE
EARLY last month, former president Jacob Zuma issued a statement defying a Constitutional Court decision that compelled him to appear before the judicial commission probing grand corruption in South Africa. He used a war metaphor to explain why he would be a victim if he adhered to the court’s decision.
The commission had asked the court to issue an order forcing him to testify before it. Zuma is central to the work of the commission, as the allegations that the state had been captured for private benefit happened during his tenure, from May 2009 to January 2018. He has also been implicated by witnesses as being complicit in the corruption.
The commission sought the apex court’s intervention after Zuma walked out because his application that chairperson Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo recuse himself was dismissed in November last year. The court ruled he should co-operate with the probe.
Zuma’s defence against the commission is based on metaphorical reasoning. Understanding his key metaphor provides insight into his rhetorical strategy. He has complained that the Constitutional Court also mimics the posture of the commission, “by suspending my Constitutional rights, rendering me completely defenceless against the commission”.
To be defenceless presupposes that someone is waging war against you.
Metaphors are not used for their own sake in politics, but as part of a strategy to persuade a particular audience to accept a point of view, and act accordingly. Zuma clearly succeeds in persuading his loyalists to continue to “defend” him. Simultaneously, he uses it as a shield against being held accountable.
The metaphorical language is key to understanding these two contradictory consequences.
He uses warfare metaphors to defend himself and persuade his supporters to continue supporting him. He presents himself as the ultimate warrior for the economic liberation of the poor. In his oral presentation to the commission in 2019, and his public statement on February 1 this year, he identifies his “stance on the transformation of this country and its economy” as the reason why he is the “target” of a campaign of “propaganda, vilification and falsified claims”.
The metaphor of warfare allows the former president to construct a version of reality that suits his purposes. He highlights incidents that make sense to him and his supporters as evidence of his opponents’ activities. Just like the apartheid security apparatus targeted him and other ANC operatives, his modern-day “enemies” – security agencies, “white monopoly capital”, the commission and Constitutional Court – also target him.
At the same time, the warfare metaphor allows Zuma to evade the aspects of reality that do not fit the narrative. Like the lonely hero on stage at the end of a Shakespearean tragedy, Zuma told Justice Zondo in July 2019: “Zuma must go. What has he done? Nobody can tell. He’s corrupt. What has he done? Nothing.”
This “nothing” is the point – in terms of the warfare metaphor – that paints him in the defenceless victim role. The former president’s metaphorical interpretation of reality excludes the possibility that evidence of his alleged wrongdoing can be incorporated into the same narrative: such evidence must, therefore, be rejected, or be reinterpreted, as falsehoods concocted by his opponents.
Maritz is a lecturer in Afrikaans Linguistics at the University of Pretoria and Van Rooy is Professor of English at the University of Amsterdam