Racist marches, or racist marchers? Which is it, JZ?
Terence Pillay unpacks the recent marches calling for Jacob Zuma to resign - and looks at the response from the presidency.
Listen to the full interview here or read the blog below:
There is another march calling for the resignation of President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday, which takes place from Church Street in Pretoria to the Union Buildings. Just last Friday, a nationwide march to the same end took place, seeing South Africans of all races united in a common cause.
So it’s been only a few days since some people came out of their political closets to march calling for Jacob Zuma to step down as President of South Africa, as impractical as that may seem. And impractical because he’s never going to do that. What will happen is a vote of no confidence will be tabled in parliament by the opposition, the ANC is going to vote against the vote of no confidence, and he’s going to stay as President.
If by some bizarre, slim chance everybody in the ANC grows a pair, and votes in support of the no confidence proposal, then he’ll have to step down and Baleka Mbete will become the President because she’s the Speaker. And we have to ask ourselves which is the lesser of the two evils?
Then after the march, Zuma said in response to allegations that there were posters at the marches on Friday, 7 April, depicting black people as baboons, the “marchers” not the “marches” were racist. He went on to say that what it has demonstrated is that there are, amongst us, white compatriots (whatever that means!) who still think of black people as sub-human. He said that the marchers revealed that racism is still alive in South Africa.
The fact is: you can’t deny that. Racism is very much alive in South Africa, so let’s not bury our heads in the sand about it. But the march had nothing to do with racism. It was a way for people to voice their opinion outside the normal political process. And that’s why it’s enshrined in our constitution – the right to assembly; the right to gather and make your opinions heard. So that’s really all it is.
I think that’s probably what people like Mmusi Maimane, Julius Malema, Bantu Holomisa, and representatives of the opposition groups were saying – whatever the outcome of the vote of no confidence, what the march has done is: it’s sent a signal to government, almost like a dipstick of the sentiment of the people in the country and not just one race.
You could not have had these kinds of marches in the past; you would have been tear-gassed, shot at or thrown into the backs of police vans. Now we have a constitution that guarantees that right and we must respect that.
Of course, the President of the country himself doesn’t respect the constitution because the constitutional court has shown us that. And there are innumerable examples of that; the way in which he treated the Nkandla report and the way in which he’s allowed his duty to be influenced by people like the Guptas, who by the way have a military vehicle in their backyard, which apparently they have a right to because they’re under threat. Well, we’re all under threat from crime but what we do is call a security company, but that’s another show altogether.
So it would appear, based on his behaviour and actions to date, that the President doesn’t give the constitution the due respect that it deserves. And he should step down because he is in fact corrupt. What we have here is a situation where we have the cult of this personality, which is Jacob Zuma, elevated to this particular status of the President of the ANC and the President of the country, legitimately so through the process that he’s gone through, but at the same time we are trying to fight corruption by trying to fight this personality. And I think it shouldn’t be about the personality, it should be about corruption, because I can assure you it’s not only Jacob Zuma that is corrupt.
We have seen the culture of corruption in this country and we’ve heard about the cases of the cartels and the price fixing within certain sectors of the economy, there’s a forensic investigation into the ABSA monies that was laundered off into some Swiss bank account, so there’s a lot of corruption at a lot of different levels. There’s collusion, which is a form of corruption, there’s tax evasion, and these kinds of things that need to be tackled in order for us, as a developmental state, to really live out the goals of the constitution, in law. And so if we’re going to deal with that, then we need to deal with corruption.
I think by investing all this energy into trying to bring down this one personality, who has kind of become the poster child for corruption, we’ve forgotten that we need to deal with a lot more than just Jacob Zuma. So we should be taking on corruption in whatever form. And through that, enabling the state to deliver on its mandate, which is to tackle poverty, unemployment, and inequality – the three pillars of the National Development Plan.
The great thing is that ordinary South Africans are slowly starting to feel empowered by the fact that we have a voice and we can go out into the streets and make that voice heard. But I think ordinary South Africans should also hold their politically elected leaders to account at all levels. So where you have the most influence is in your local political formations. Within the political parties, it may be a branch and within local government, it will be your ward councillors. These people need to be held to account. So when they don’t deliver on promises or respond to issues and concerns, or are aware of corruption, you need to use the mechanisms in place. You need to report them.
Also, you need to not be complicit. It’s one thing to say we find this all so despicable, but then you have a company, which in terms of the BEE legislation might have a front and benefit from a government tender, when in fact they really shouldn’t. So you can’t have double standards, you can’t pay bribes to police officers to get out of traffic tickets; and if you’re going to hold people to a high standard, then you need to hold yourself to a high standard as well.
It also means if you’re going to go out and fight a cause like corruption in the streets, in a march, then you need to make sure you don’t bring your banner with that says something stupid and racist! In fact, we don’t want people like that in our marches because that’s not representative of South Africans; that’s not representative of the general, well-meaning people of this country who are trying to build the South Africa of people like Nelson Mandela.
And we need to not tolerate it. If there were posters that were demeaning or offensive to a particular race, the person standing next to that person holding that banner should also take responsibility for that. You can’t stand there in one breath and say I’m holding government to a high moral position and then allow this idiot to stand next to you with a poster like that. You need to ask, “What the hell is your problem? Take that banner down and get out of my march!”
At the end of the day, the great thing is that we can raise dissenting and alternative voices in this country. We have a relatively independent media and we can afford not to hold anything back. I mean, in a country that’s under a repressive, authoritarian rule, you won’t have a journalist being able to confront the secretary general of the ruling party and ask the really tough questions. That wouldn’t’ even be allowed or screened; they would probably be hauled into the back of a police van. And we should at least be glad we don’t have that here.
So it’s been only a few days since some people came out of their political closets to march calling for Jacob Zuma to step down as President of South Africa, as impractical as that may seem. And impractical because he’s never going to do that. What will happen is a vote of no confidence will be tabled in parliament by the opposition, the ANC is going to vote against the vote of no confidence, and he’s going to stay as President.
If by some bizarre, slim chance everybody in the ANC grows a pair, and votes in support of the no confidence proposal, then he’ll have to step down and Baleka Mbete will become the President because she’s the Speaker. And we have to ask ourselves which is the lesser of the two evils?
Then after the march, Zuma said in response to allegations that there were posters at the marches on Friday, 7 April, depicting black people as baboons, the “marchers” not the “marches” were racist. He went on to say that what it has demonstrated is that there are, amongst us, white compatriots (whatever that means!) who still think of black people as sub-human. He said that the marchers revealed that racism is still alive in South Africa.
The fact is: you can’t deny that. Racism is very much alive in South Africa, so let’s not bury our heads in the sand about it. But the march had nothing to do with racism. It was a way for people to voice their opinion outside the normal political process. And that’s why it’s enshrined in our constitution – the right to assembly; the right to gather and make your opinions heard. So that’s really all it is.
I think that’s probably what people like Mmusi Maimane, Julius Malema, Bantu Holomisa, and representatives of the opposition groups were saying – whatever the outcome of the vote of no confidence, what the march has done is: it’s sent a signal to government, almost like a dipstick of the sentiment of the people in the country and not just one race.
You could not have had these kinds of marches in the past; you would have been tear-gassed, shot at or thrown into the backs of police vans. Now we have a constitution that guarantees that right and we must respect that.
Of course, the President of the country himself doesn’t respect the constitution because the constitutional court has shown us that. And there are innumerable examples of that; the way in which he treated the Nkandla report and the way in which he’s allowed his duty to be influenced by people like the Guptas, who by the way have a military vehicle in their backyard, which apparently they have a right to because they’re under threat. Well, we’re all under threat from crime but what we do is call a security company, but that’s another show altogether.
So it would appear, based on his behaviour and actions to date, that the President doesn’t give the constitution the due respect that it deserves. And he should step down because he is in fact corrupt. What we have here is a situation where we have the cult of this personality, which is Jacob Zuma, elevated to this particular status of the President of the ANC and the President of the country, legitimately so through the process that he’s gone through, but at the same time we are trying to fight corruption by trying to fight this personality. And I think it shouldn’t be about the personality, it should be about corruption, because I can assure you it’s not only Jacob Zuma that is corrupt.
We have seen the culture of corruption in this country and we’ve heard about the cases of the cartels and the price fixing within certain sectors of the economy, there’s a forensic investigation into the ABSA monies that was laundered off into some Swiss bank account, so there’s a lot of corruption at a lot of different levels. There’s collusion, which is a form of corruption, there’s tax evasion, and these kinds of things that need to be tackled in order for us, as a developmental state, to really live out the goals of the constitution, in law. And so if we’re going to deal with that, then we need to deal with corruption.
I think by investing all this energy into trying to bring down this one personality, who has kind of become the poster child for corruption, we’ve forgotten that we need to deal with a lot more than just Jacob Zuma. So we should be taking on corruption in whatever form. And through that, enabling the state to deliver on its mandate, which is to tackle poverty, unemployment, and inequality – the three pillars of the National Development Plan.
The great thing is that ordinary South Africans are slowly starting to feel empowered by the fact that we have a voice and we can go out into the streets and make that voice heard. But I think ordinary South Africans should also hold their politically elected leaders to account at all levels. So where you have the most influence is in your local political formations. Within the political parties, it may be a branch and within local government, it will be your ward councillors. These people need to be held to account. So when they don’t deliver on promises or respond to issues and concerns, or are aware of corruption, you need to use the mechanisms in place. You need to report them.
Also, you need to not be complicit. It’s one thing to say we find this all so despicable, but then you have a company, which in terms of the BEE legislation might have a front and benefit from a government tender, when in fact they really shouldn’t. So you can’t have double standards, you can’t pay bribes to police officers to get out of traffic tickets; and if you’re going to hold people to a high standard, then you need to hold yourself to a high standard as well.
It also means if you’re going to go out and fight a cause like corruption in the streets, in a march, then you need to make sure you don’t bring your banner with that says something stupid and racist! In fact, we don’t want people like that in our marches because that’s not representative of South Africans; that’s not representative of the general, well-meaning people of this country who are trying to build the South Africa of people like Nelson Mandela.
And we need to not tolerate it. If there were posters that were demeaning or offensive to a particular race, the person standing next to that person holding that banner should also take responsibility for that. You can’t stand there in one breath and say I’m holding government to a high moral position and then allow this idiot to stand next to you with a poster like that. You need to ask, “What the hell is your problem? Take that banner down and get out of my march!”
At the end of the day, the great thing is that we can raise dissenting and alternative voices in this country. We have a relatively independent media and we can afford not to hold anything back. I mean, in a country that’s under a repressive, authoritarian rule, you won’t have a journalist being able to confront the secretary general of the ruling party and ask the really tough questions. That wouldn’t’ even be allowed or screened; they would probably be hauled into the back of a police van. And we should at least be glad we don’t have that here.
You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and tweet him your thoughts.
For more from Terence, check out his previous shows below.