Publication: Mail and Guardian Issued: Date: 2005-10-21 Reporter: Rapule Tabane Reporter:

Zuma Tips His Campaign Hand

 

Publication 

Mail and Guardian
Date

2005-10-21

Reporter

 Rapule Tabane[]

Web Link

www.mg.co.za

 

African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma did just enough this week to comply formally with his party-imposed ceasefire agreement with President Thabo Mbeki -- while signalling his intention to rally the whole country behind his campaign for the presidency.

Zuma is unquestionably on the campaign trail. After thousands turned up at his court appearance in Durban last week, he went on to address about 3 000 students in Umtata, Eastern Cape, last Thursday, and ­ flanked by ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula and Young Communist League national secretary Buti Manamela ­ about 2 000 wildly appreciative students at the Vaal University of Technology in Vanderbijlpark on Wednesday.

Next week he takes his roadshow to Limpopo and Gauteng to mark the 65th anniversary of the Youth League.

The former deputy president has apparently adopted an approach of avoiding direct confrontation with Mbeki, formally appeasing the president’s supporters, who have demanded that he denounce “un-ANC” behaviour.

Instead, the aim is to consolidate his mass support through insinuation and innuendo. Carefully crafting his language, Zuma peppered his speech in Vanderbijlpark with attacks on unnamed leaders.

Before addressing the students, he told the media he condemned his supporters in the ANC who burned images of Mbeki in his name, as had happened in Durban. He stressed that this was not the first time he had criticised his own supporters, saying he had done the same in Mpumalanga earlier this year.

He went on to tell the students: “No matter how much you disagree with a comrade in the ANC, it is not acceptable to use insults. It is not the culture of the ANC. It does not help me or the organisation.”

Barely two days after the ANC national working committee vowed to crackdown on unruly elements, Zuma supporters were at their colourful best in what was ostensibly a campaign to drum up support for the Youth League-South African Students Congress and Young Communists League alliance contesting the university’s SRC elections.

Some dressed in T-shirts with images of Zuma and posters saying “Zuma for President” and “100% Zuma”. Student leaders who introduced him declared: “Some of us call him our president in waiting. We are supporters of JZ and we are proud.”
The students also sang a song rejecting a “capitalist agenda”, which, they sang, was behind the efforts to discredit Zuma.

Without any prompting, the Youth League’s Mbalula defended Zuma’s role to journalists. “I know you call it a campaign, but it is not. It is the political programme of the ANC. As youth, we control public opinion not through newspapers but by going to the people.

“The ANC deputy president is more available to us because he is no longer constrained by government responsibilities. If he were still in government, he would probably be in Burundi now,” Mbalula said.

Asked why Mbeki had not been invited, Mbalula said the president was unavailable because of prior commitments.

Zuma’s indirect attacks on Mbeki included a reference to “intellectual politicians”.

Quoting past ANC leader Duma Nokwe, he said: “Nokwe said the ideas of intellectuals live in suitcases. If you ask them a question, they have to consult books instead of giving a direct response *1.”

The speech contained another thinly veiled suggestion that the president was not the people’s choice: “Those leaders who are made by others cannot define their own path,” Zuma said.

“Some leaders are made by newspapers; Mao Tse Tsung called them paper leaders. If you are not made by newspapers then you cannot be made to disappear by them.”

Zuma’s tilt at the media comes in a week in which several newspapers attacked his behaviour outside of the Durban Magistrate’s Court as unworthy of a future president.

He also took a swipe at political analysts. “ You know a situation better than them, but they analyse it to you. They even analyse you.”

Zuma again attacked unnamed leaders for being intolerant of dissent. “We who are enlightened must know when to defend our rights. One of those rights is to speak. Some of us like to speak. Some of us want people to only talk in praise but not to criticise.”

ANC head of the Presidency Smuts Ngonyama said Mbeki and Zuma were due to finalise a proposal on how to deal with tensions within the ANC and present it to the secretary general, Kgalema Motlanthe, within a week. Motlanthe would then call a national executive committee meeting to discuss it.

With acknowledgements to Rapule Tabane and the Mail and Guardian.


*1  That's rich coming from this one.