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President Zuma, Think Like an African (it helps)
Takura Zhangazha
October 22, 2013

http://takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com/2013/10/president-zuma-think-like-african-it.html

South African President Jacob Zuma is generally a man who harbours little fear of the negative consequences of his words or actions. Or if he does, he exhibits a certain confidence that he will overcome any such problematic effects of what he says or does. His reported utterances at a meeting organized by his party the African National Congress (ANC) about what was essentially a domestic matter, however, went on to betray his unfortunate attitude toward Africa.

As reported in the City Press newspaper, he jokingly advised the meeting that on the matter of ‘etolls’ in his country, South Africans must not “ think like Africans in Africa generally, we’re in Johannesburg.” He is reported to have further added that the Gauteng highways are ‘not some national road in Malawi’ to further buttress his distasteful humour.

If these statements were being attributed to an ordinary citizen of any African country, they probably would not have made any headlines. But coming as they are from South Africa’s President, they cannot be swept under the carpet.

Being a Zimbabwean, I am acutely aware that humour has a general role in politics, particularly where it is used for comparative assessment of progress between countries. Or even domestically as it relates to freedom of expression. I however, do not agree with humour being used to connote false stereotypes of others let alone being used in such an abrasive and far reaching manner by a sitting head of state and government. Moreso, by an African one, at a time when the continent remains on an international back-foot due in part, to the perpetuation of uninformed stereotyping of some countries as being more 'equal than others'.

Mr. Zuma’s regrettable comments have the specific import of implying two issues. Firstly that he believes that his country is ‘exceptional’ and therefore cannot be viewed from the prism of being a sister African country. He may be correct in the eyes of his supporters but the premise of this argumentation is however, politically misplaced. South Africa is indeed an exceptional country but not by way of narrow, self serving comparison to the status of the development of other African countries. It is exceptional in the sense that it owes its liberation not only to the current ruling party but the contribution of many African countries and peoples that its current president finds fit to deride.

Furthermore, assumptions of any economic/development superiority of South Africa must also be premised on the knowledge that due to the colonial development of forced (political and economic) circular migration in Southern Africa, contributions to its current status are also historically grounded in the peoples of the sub-region. This is why one of the most tragic colonial institutions were the Native Labour Associations, inclusive of the notorious but heavily utilized Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (commonly referred to as WENELA by us, the African locals.)

In singularly claiming a specific un-African uniqueness to his country, President Zuma is being dishonest to himself and the legacy of African liberation struggles that his own party, the ANC, proudly lays claim to. His utterances are borderline disheartening confirmation of the unfortunate myth that the more an African country was colonized the better it turned out in development/modernisation. If that were to be true, we might as well thank the settler colonials for getting us to where we are, a development that would be a treasonous betrayal of the liberation struggles whose challenges and objectives we are still trying to overcome and achieve in contemporary time.

A second and final effect of the statement attributed to Mr. Zuma is its import on xenophobia in his own backyard. The consistent and violent “othering” of fellow Africans by poorer South Africans cannot have found better endorsement than in the utterances of its head of government. Because there is a misconception that citizens from other African countries come to take local jobs, any insinuation, particularly at the highest leadership level, that South Africa is rich beyond the imagination of the rest of the continent does not serve to promote peaceful co-existence in volatile communities. Instead it gives wrong nationalistic premise to poorer and disadvantaged South Africans to want to falsely but violently gatekeep wealth that they do not control anyway.

Indeed South Africa is exceptional (as is any other country) and its roads are not like those of Malawi. It however, is an African country on the African continent and with its historical umbilical cord in Africa. While we can forgive the ignorance of musicians and other artistic celebrities, President Zuma’s unfortunate attempt at humour is not funny.

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