Zuma+stars+as+saviour+of+the+movement,+Harper,+Sunday+Times

Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 18 June 2006
=Zuma stars as saviour of the movement=


 * //Struggle rhetoric inflates ANC deputy into champion of Left//**


 * PADDY HARPER**

IF ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma holds presidential ambitions, then June 16 2006 was the day on which he was unveiled as the crown prince of the Left of the black, green and gold.

While a succession of speakers at the ANC Youth League’s Youth Day celebrations in Durban stressed that the event was about commemoration and not Zuma, in reality he was presented as the man in whom the party’s history, tradition and ethos was invested.

Zuma was projected as the public face of a leftist project within the ANC and its alliance partners, a movement within the movement aimed at taking forward the cause of the poor, “defending our revolution” and defending its “collective leadership at all costs”.

The event evoked images of the freshly unbanned ANC, from the massive turnout to the evocation of revolutionary history interspersed with long-unfashionable leftist rhetoric.

Zuma himself was, quite frankly, presidential. From his blue Madiba shirt to every measured word in his speech, this was the man who represented everything the ANC had fought for.

Entering the packed stadium in a five-car convoy, he remained in his vehicle until the last VIP was seated.

He emerged to a chorus of “My President” and carried out a lap of honour flanked by a phalanx of bodyguards and his close friend and ally, ANC KwaZulu-Natal deputy chairman Dr Zweli Mkhize.

Taking the podium, Zuma sat quietly and confidently as speaker after speaker dug into the history of the ANC and the contributions of the 1976 generation.

Mkhize, SA Communist Party general-secretary Blade Nzimande and Cosatu general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi called on the youth to mobilise around casualisation of the job market, education and the need to build the ANC as a party of the Left.

Then came ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula, who savaged “them” — big business, the South African Football Association, the “petty bourgeoisie’s pseudo-intellectuals”.

The youth, Mbalula charged, had the right ... no, the obligation, to take up this fight, to guard against “surprise leaders” foisted upon them.

Then came Zuma.

He stood with microphone in hand, grooving to slickly recorded versions of Awuleth’ umshiniwami (Bring me my machine gun). The vocals were faded out and he launched into song. The crowd went ballistic, their roars of approval almost drowning out Zuma’s deep, emphatic rendition.

As the applause died, Zuma delivered a measured and tightly researched address in which every statement was anchored by references to historical ANC utterances, policy statements and the movement’s finest moments.

For a short while he looked back and the ANC became once more the liberation movement of Dube, Seme, Luthuli and Tambo, an organic movement motivated by a search for justice, not a ruling party battling with the issues of governance, political power and succession.

And Zuma, quite clearly, was the man entrusted with these principles, every inch the president-in-waiting: the faithful servant of the poor, the figurehead of collective leadership, the champion of the Left.

From his reference to “my own recent error”, in having unprotected sex with the woman who accused him of rape, to his call on the youth to “build the ANC as the only guardian of your future” this was a man who put party unity and the masses above self-interest.

The ANC, he said, had always faced its internal challenges head on and had found ways to resolve them. The current challenges, he said, would be dealt with in this way, with the party membership having the final say.

Even his trademark throw-away lines were full of meaning: “ANC leaders,” he said, “do not fall from trees.”


 * Meanwhile, Philani Nombembe reports that about 600 people attended Zuma’s rally in the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha yesterday where he defended the tripartite alliance.

“There are people who say the alliance should come to an end. These people are not interested in the welfare of poor South Africans because the alliance stands for the poor,” he said.

Zuma also said that radical voices were silent in the debate about the future of the alliance.

“Debates about how the country is run, where the country is heading ... are dominated by the wrong people. Communists are not writing in feature columns, where they can express their opinions. It is the wrong people who do.”

Zuma added that the “wrong people” were trying to explain what was wrong with the ANC and trying to come up with solutions.

“It is the same people who dominate TV screens and radio — something they never did during the struggle,” he said.


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/articles/article.aspx?ID=ST6A191184**

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