Zuma needs to denounce killing talk

Zuma’s response to recent threats of violence by some of his key supporters has been inadequate, suggesting that he is afraid of them or condones what they say.

Zuma says the African National Congress (ANC) was blessed in heaven and will therefore rule until ‘Jesus comes back’.

Can we shrug off Zuma’s de facto prediction of permanent ANC rule as harmless hyperbole? Perhaps, except for some of the other things he has said. One, with reference to Cape Town, is that ‘we should not allow anyone to govern our city when we are ruling the country’. Numerous attempts, some of them foul, to unseat Helen Zille from ‘our city’s’ mayorship are reminders that factions in the ANC do not recognise the legitimacy of a democratic process when someone other than the party of liberation wins.

How strong these anti-democratic factions are within the ANC is impossible to say.

Unfortunately, some of them are among Zuma’s most vociferous supporters. They include people who brazenly threaten public violence, confident that they can do so with impunity. Unless they are denounced they are likely to grow in confidence, number, and influence.

Although Zuma has recently voiced some blunt criticism of Mugabe, his public response to the recent threats of violence emanating from some of his own supporters has been mealy-mouthed. It was left to the ANC’s deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, to repudiate ANC youth leader Julius Malema’s threats to ‘die, take up arms, shoot and kill’ for Zuma. Malema was also rebuked by the party’s official spokesman, Jessie Duarte. But other senior party people have been loath to denounce Malema. Perhaps they agree with him. Their silence over the thuggery at the youth league’s conference in the Free State in April suggests they may also be afraid of him. Perhaps, like some commentators and cartoonists, they think he is just a baby buffoon.

Killing talk from buffoons can be dangerous in a country where violence simmers round the clock 365 days a year. Malema’s threats to kill were issued after at least 60 deaths in the violence that erupted in Alexandra on 11th May. They were also issued in the context of legal proceedings against Zuma, and therefore constitute an attack on the judicial process. When Malema ‘clarifies’ that he will ‘die in the defence of the revolution’ he sounds like some of Mugabe’s associates. No doubt some of them were also once laughed off as clowns.

Shortly after Malema’s remarks, another Zuma associate, Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), said ‘we are prepared to lay down our lives and shoot and kill’ for Zuma. Vavi recently condemned ‘state-sponsored’ violence in Zimbabwe. These are crocodile tears when he himself threatens violence in South Africa and when some of his followers are actually guilty of union-sponsored violence.

Two years ago some 60 security guards were murdered for not obeying a strike decreed by the Cosatu-affiliated South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union. During the strike Vavi called for workers defying it to be attacked. Not long ago an official of another Cosatu affiliate, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, threatened ‘extreme violence’ against pupils and teachers in Alexandra who failed to observe a boycott call. There were numerous threats and incidents of violence during the teaching strike in the middle of last year. The great mass of South African schooling has no hope of getting out of the doldrums when some of our teachers and their leaders behave and talk like thugs. Earlier in 2007 two bus drivers were executed for apparently defying a strike decree.

Despite the advent of democracy, a legitimate government, and every constitutionally guaranteed right ever thought of, some of Zuma’s supporters think violence and the threat thereof are acceptable political instruments. Zuma cannot be held responsible for union-sponsored violence or even the inflammatory remarks to which some of his supporters are prone. But these men are a public menace and he needs to repudiate them without hesitation or equivocation. At best, failure to do so will suggest he is beholden to them. At worst, it will indicate that he condones what they say.