Kameraad Mhambi is not alone in his opinion that the South Africa middle-classes, the press and the mink set, underestimate Jacob Zuma. Jeremy Gordin published an excellent article, titled: Its time to take Zuma seriously.
He was as amused as I by the opposition parties’ and press’s response to Zuma’s opening adres to parliament.
Why was this?
Why were the opposition politicians and analysts in a state of apparent perplexity about Zuma’s speech? Why was damning him with faint praise the best they could do?
I think there is a two-part answer to these questions.
The first part of the answer is that Zuma’s speech was pretty damn clever and this took everyone aback.
Zuma covered all the bases for which he would have been lambasted if he had not covered them. He made certain to connect clearly his administration to Nelson Mandela’s.
Zuma also moved seamlessly between the requisite Olympian overview and the personal touch that we mere mortals love – telling school kids to do their homework and teachers to come to class on time. By trying to speak Afrikaans, by not speaking isiZulu (and choosing instead Sotho and isiXhosa), and via his comments on national unity, he stayed well away from former President Thabo Mbeki’s petty-minded, divisive carping.
Most importantly – and only the Freedom Front Plus’ Pieter Mulder seemed to have picked this up – Zuma firmly closed the door on the Mbeki-type denialism that we have had our noses rubbed in for a decade.
Zuma might have been short on detail. But at least, and at last, HIV-Aids, crime, the Zimbabwean situation and a host of other ills – from the global recession to unemployment and the state of health care – were dealt with in an adult fashion as realities, and not defensively either.
But why were people apparently unable to recognise these qualities? Why did they not know what to say?
The second part of the answer to these questions is that, for reasons with which we are all familiar, the media and the opposition (from whom it might be expected) still do not trust Zuma.
There is still a strange air of begrudging disbelief that hangs around members of the media and analysts when it comes to Zuma.
It’s almost as if they expect him suddenly to stop making a measured and careful presidential speech and to rip off his suit and tie, revealing leopard skins beneath, and to start frothing at the mouth and calling for his machine gun.
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1 response so far ↓
1 Michael Graaf
// Jun 14, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I suppose a speech, as a text and a performance, must be taken in its context. We know that professional researchers, speechwriters and sometimes “coaches” are employed to assist politicians in composing and delivering speeches; thus we interpret the speeches in the light of contextual knowledge – about the speechmaker’s team, their prior performance, etc.
And that is where, even were Msholozi to deliver a truly Obaman (Obamic?) speech, it would carry less weight.
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