Jacob Zuma Research Articles

Violent protests as language of agency in a post-apartheid South Africa – A theological pastoral study

The South African political and social landscape has been dominated and characterised by, among others, a growing number of protests in recent years. Protesting and marching are allowed by the constitution of the country, provided the required permission is granted by relevant authorities. Unfortunately, very few protests and marches end peacefully. Most lead to the destruction of property and even loss of life. Recent violent protests demanding the release of the jailed former President, Jacob Zuma, were estimated to cause losses of not less than a hundred million rand, with shops looted and trucks burnt. Violent protests have become the norm – similar to the period of contestations against the apartheid government. The point of departure of this article is that destructive protests need to be investigated to determine the causes while unveiling the challenges such protests bring to the community and the nation at large. The critical reading of post-apartheid academic and non-academic texts relevant to the topic will be read within the South African context, to determine the causes as we seek ways to minimise or even eradicate the violence that is destroying South Africa. The article will also advance the role of theology, particularly practical theology, in the elimination of such practices.Contribution: Working towards eliminating and arresting the social ills that are destroying South Africa cannot be achieved without addressing the destructive protests, which are delaying and even reversing the achievements of democracy. It is the role of practical theology, through its pastoral care and counselling, to engage with broken communities in trying to teach, counsel and show them the importance of avoiding vandalism and cruelty when seeking service delivery from their leaders.

Speaker landscapes: machine learning opens a window on the everyday language of opinion

ABSTRACTWe propose a new method that embeds speakers into a spatial representation according to the linguistic similarity of their contributions to a debate. Such “speaker landscapes” can be constructed quantitatively using word embeddings by annotating text corpora of speech samples by tokens representing the speakers. The way embeddings are constructed from predictive machine learning models means that speaker-tokens are placed closer together if they are easier to confuse given their speech samples. The result is a nuanced measure of similarity in speech which takes into account the wealth of linguistic signification and structure that the text prediction model can learn. We validate this tool using two South African case studies: the Twitter debate around the arrest and imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma, and quotes from the news media about land reform. The results show that speaker landscapes make social qualities such as group membership and opinions evident, and we discuss how speaker landscapes open up new methods for studying opinion discourse with text data.

Trust is personal and professional: The role of trust in the rise and fall of a South African civil society coalition

This article explores trust dynamics among a coalition of civil society organizations called Unite Behind that formed in Cape Town, South Africa, in late 2017. Unite Behind was established to demand more accountability from a state marred by corruption—and specifically for the resignation of then President Jacob Zuma. When Zuma resigned, the coalition attempted to transition to a social movement campaigning for social justice but declined as a coalition into an organization of sorts. Taking trust as a positive belief in the reliability, truth or ability of an actor or entity, this article argues that conceptions of political and social/generalized trust are of less importance in explaining the rise and fall of Unite Behind than a combination of personal trust in particular leaders, and a form of particularized trust, namely, trust in other organizations. This notion of organizational trust as a form of particularized trust is of potential wider importance to the analysis of civil society network co-ordination.

Politics, Jokes and Power in Africa: The View From Stand-Up Comedy

ABSTRACT The history of stand-up comedy in Africa has often been tied to developments in popular culture, language, and performance. In this article, I take a different perspective by identifying the interactivities of politics and comedy, and how the actions, endorsements, and even censure of national leaders across different nations buoyed up stand-up performances on the continent. With specific examples from different countries, the explications in this paper show how the (in)actions of political leadership in Africa served as fodder for laughter elicitation – in Kenya, with Daniel arap Moi’s capitulation and Mwai Kibaki’s lethargy; in Nigeria, with Olusegun Obasanjo’s comedian-president posture as well as the gaffes of Patience Jonathan; and in South Africa, with Jacob Zuma’s unending drama until his resignation. These situations are equally contrasted with the experiences in Uganda, Egypt and Rwanda, where political censure is variously rife.

An Afrocentric Analysis of the Practicality of Radical Economic Transformation in the Context of South Africa–China Relations, 2013–2017

Ascending to the presidency at the time of the lingering global economic crisis, Jacob Zuma drew South Africa closer to China as an alternative development partner. The scholarly literature on South Africa–China relations during Zuma's administration focuses largely on whether the relationship was mutually beneficial and on the purported shift in South Africa's foreign policy from Euro-American developed countries towards the East, with China being at the forefront. Despite the widespread calls for radical economic transformation during Zuma's administration, the existing discourse has not interrogated the practicality of the proposed policy in the context of South Africa–China relations. In light of the above, the current article adopts Afrocentricity to interrogate the practicality of radical economic transformation in the context of South Africa–China relations. Methodologically, the author engaged in qualitative desktop research that relied heavily on secondary data and employed document review to analyse the collected data.

South African State Capture: A Political Maneuvering or an Economic Contestation?

This article does not defend any corruption or nepotism acts by the actors in the process of state capture but argues that the state capture report and exposure of corruption related to the Gupta family and former President Jacob Zuma were less motivated by arresting corruption. Instead, it was more about monopolisation and competition in State-Owned Entities (SOEs). President Zuma’s tenure was marked by the advent of Radical Economic Transformation (RET) policies. The RET policies meant replacing white-owned businesses in the SOEs with historically disadvantaged black entrepreneurs. Hence, the authors argue that the narrative around state capture was exaggerated by mainstream media, and this article explores various events that led to the exaggeration between the Guptas and white monopoly capital in SOEs. The article employs a Marxist perspective of the state to unpack the relationship between government officials and businesses that sought to exaggerate the state capture narrative in South Africa. Three SOEs, namely South African Airways (SAA), Eskom, and the mining industry, are utilised as test cases to showcase the exaggeration by those in competition to monopolise the economy.

Community and Political Based Protests in South Africa: Issues, Challenges, and Lessons for the Continent

The paper seeks to examine the key reasons behind the recent violent community protests in South Africa. It analyses the challenges the political elites would have to navigate in order to address the concerns of the people and the impact such protests would have on peace, stability, and governance on the African continent. Suffice it to note that political and community-based protests have been a common occurrence in South Africa since the advent of democracy in the country in 1994. Though the nomenclature and manifestation of such protests have been a subject of great debate, their frequent reoccurrence is a cause for concern for many in South Africa and, to a greater extent, the continent. The magnitude and scale of the July 2021 protests in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, precipitated by the incarceration of the former president Jacob Zuma, raises key fundamental concerns. First was the spontaneity in the manner in which the riots were undertaken; second was the scale and magnitude of destruction the two provinces experienced. This calls into question whether the protests were planned or genuine concerns arising from the incarceration of a political leader? While the incarceration of the former president was the trigger, there is evidence that the protests were inspired by unmet promises and the limited capacity of the country to deliver on people’s hopes and aspirations. However, Hough (2008), Tsheola (2012), and Nyamnjoh (2018) have argued that the root causes of violent protests in post-apartheid South Africa are not so much the unmet promises to address poverty and unemployment but rather people’s experiences of inequality and relative deprivation. In other words, people are dissatisfied when they compare their own quality of life and their economic and social opportunities with those of better-off communities and households. Fundamentally, therefore, one of the reasons the country has experienced violent protests is not necessarily the fact that the people are poor, but rather that protesters consider themselves poor vis-à-vis better-off communities. Evidently, the paper attempts to clarify some of the key issues political elites need to look out for as they put in place measures to avoid the re-occurrence of such protests and provides challenges the country would have to overcome in order to address people’s grievances. Fundamentally, what lessons can the African continent learn from these protests? What measures should the African Union, together with its member states, adopt in order to ensure that people’s genuine grievances are addressed in a timely and expeditious manner. The paper concludes by suggesting that a careful reassessment of local governance structures in South Africa would have to be contemplated with an emphasis on accountability and strict measures to sanction recalcitrant councilors.

The Politics of the Penis: Post-Apartheid Zulu Nationalism and Martial Masculinity, ca 1999 to 2018

ABSTRACT In 1989, Jean-François Bayart published the now foundational text, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, introducing the Cameroonian idiom ‘la politique du ventre’ (the politics of the belly), which draws on the idea that having a belly in the African context connotes not only wealth but also power. Lynn Thomas adopted Bayart’s idiom for her Politics of the Womb (2003, 3–4), flipping the idiom to explore ‘the particular capacities and powers attached to the female belly or the womb to demonstrate the centrality of reproductive struggles to African history’. While the politics of the belly confronts the propensity of political figures to hoard resources and the politics of the womb demonstrated young women’s autonomy over their own bodies, the politics of the penis expose how former South African president Jacob Zuma utilised his masculinity as a tool to fortify power and material wealth. From this vantage point, this paper explores the ‘politics of the penis’ that characterised Zuma’s presidency, deploying this phallic idiom to examine the consolidation of Zulu political tribalism, Zuma’s public displays of masculinit(ies) and heavily sexualised politics.

Media Discourse, Legal, and Ethical Issues Arising from the Zuma Saga and Nkandlagate

Allegations of corruption and rape against President Jacob Zuma constituted among the most covered stories in South Africa and beyond. Widely dubbed “the Zuma saga” by the media, the twin stories began with allegations of corruption in the arms deal. While the corruption case still gripped the public, another damning allegation (rape) surfaced and fermented the story to levels surpassed by no other story at the time. Zuma was subsequently acquitted of the rape charge, but the charge of corruption continued relentlessly until the eve of the 2009 elections, in which he was elected as president. But just as the South African public thought the dust was settling, Zuma was hit by another damning allegation of inappropriately spending R250 million on upgrading Nkandla, his private residence. This article is three-pronged. First, it examines the key issues that accounted for the media frenzy sparked by both the Nkandla debacle and the Zuma saga. Second, it unravels critical ethical questions and legal issues implicit in the aforementioned cases. Third, because Zuma’s acquittal raised questions regarding the independence of the judiciary, the article also assesses the condition of judicial independence in South Africa. Theoretically, the article is informed by the sociology of journalism ethics and the notions of ethical leadership and judicial independence.

The presentation of South African politicians in The Times newspaper column “On the Contrary”: 2012-2017

This paper examined South African politicians' (re)presentation in Tony Leon’s regular column, On the contrary, which appeared in The Times newspaper from 2012 to 2017. This period in South African politics is made interesting by the fact that it coincides with the time when there was mounting pressure for the then president, Jacob Zuma, of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), to step down, especially between 7 January 2015 and 21 March 2017. Tony Leon, who also once served as a councilor for the Democratic Party (DA), one of the major opposition parties in South Africa is the columnist who at the time authors the on the contrary column. This creates interesting research on how the columnist and the newspaper are able or not to maintain ethical journalism. In conducting the study, this article employs the framing theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA) as research tools to assess the columnists’ objectivity and bias in his depiction of the then president and several prominent politicians during the examined period. Data analysis constitutes six newspaper articles which were purposively selected to obtain a representative sample. The results indicated that these articles were well-researched in respect of the information they presented. At the same time, biased tendencies were noted in favor of the political party aligned to the columnist.

The Economic Freedom Fighters of South Africa:What do they Stand for, and who Votes for them?

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have emerged as a significant force in South African politics during the past eight years. Still, only a few scholarly studies have been published analysing its ideology, strategy, and tactics, who is voting for the party, and why. The authors argue that the EFF had emerged as a challenger to the African National Congress (ANC) by positioning itself to the left of the ruling party with a set of ideas and policy proposals that emerged from the ANC Youth League when current EFF leader Julius Malema led it. Survey and exit polling data analysed by the authors indicate that the EFF is gaining traction election by election with younger black voters in the townships on issues of land and jobs and, in the process, threatens the single-party dominance of the ANC in future South African elections. However, despite a good start, the party appears to have lost some momentum after the fall of former President Jacob Zuma and made some tactical mistakes.

How Jacob Zuma Revitalized Feminism in South Africa

On August 6, 2016, the week of the South African public holiday Women’s Day, an extraordinary protest held the nation spellbound. Then president Jacob Zuma was announcing the results of local government elections live on national television when four young women walked out of the throng of election officials and politicians. They stood in front of the president, silent but visible on the televised screen. They held up placards: “I am 1 in 3,” “Ten Years Later,” “Khanga,” “Remember Khwezi.” Although the protesters stood for the duration of the broadcast, they were forcibly removed by security agents immediately after Zuma left the stage and the cameras moved offscreen. Hustled to the back of the room, they were lambasted by senior women leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) for their “inappropriate” action. This was a spectacular demonstration: silent and nonviolent, its tactics and timing pierced the performance of presidential authority and made visible a new form of feminism.

The role of Whistleblowing as a mechanism to prevent state capture: A case from the global south

State capture is a highly problematic phenomenon, with it entailing collusion practices between state functionaries and private individuals to repurpose the state for their own gain. It creeps up in vulnerable states, those that are developing or are undergoing a transition. When it manifests, it drives those vulnerable states to fragility, turning them into vehicles for predation with severely negative consequences for the state's citizens. South Africa was plagued by state capture whilst under the leadership of Jacob Zuma (2009-2018). State-owned enterprises were looted, government contracts were manipulated, and structures intended to serve the public good were abused at the behest of the wrongdoers. This came to the fore because of the disclosures of whistleblowers, who reported the wrongdoing to parties that were able to effect action. They exposed a complex system of collusion, highlighting to the South African public how comprised the state had become. Their actions ultimately led to the removal of Jacob Zuma as president of South Africa, leading to the re-democratization of South Africa. The subject of this paper is, thus, concerned with the role the South African whistleblowers played in combating state capture. Ultimately, this paper's goal is to present an argument that whistleblowing has the capacity to curb, and even prevent, state capture. However, it must also be added that when promoting the use of whistleblowing as an ethical check, adequate legislative protection for whistleblowers needs to exist, as does the cooperation of the state and civil society when supporting whistleblowers.

In Contempt of the Highest Court in the Land: A Commentary on Secretary of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector, including Organs of State v Zuma and Others 2021 (5) SA 327 (CC)

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) is reputed to be ‘the best Constitution’ in the world. It is founded on a socio-political desire to move away from the historical realities of apartheid into the constitutional democracy in which the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Ever since the dawn of constitutional democracy, so much has been achieved to provide practical meaning to the founding values of the Constitution. The basis for this case note is former President Jacob Zuma’s actions in 2021 which culminated in contempt of court, which sought to undermine the Constitution’s authority and legitimacy of the Constitutional Court. The ultimate view adopted in this case note is that Mr Zuma succeeded in his project to undermine the Constitution and the Constitutional Court. His actions would threaten to reverse the democratic gains achieved under the Constitution. This case note analyses the reactionary measures taken by the Constitutional Court to assert its authority in light of the attacks that Mr Zuma had launched on the court and its members.

Covid-19, Public Violence, Fake News and Vaccines: A Theological Ethical Reflection

This paper attempts to deal with Covid-19, fake news and vaccines and is the product of a talk the author gave at a contact session of the Northern Theological Seminary of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa. This presentation was given a few weeks after South Africans were confronted by the eruption of public violence, “apparently” sparked by the jailing of President Jacob Zuma. The author, although requested to share ideas on Covid-19 and vaccines, felt that there was some political nexus between public violence, the feeling of being left out systematically, the unintended consequences of the lockdown, and the spark—the Constitutional Court’s decision to jail the then president. This article does not discuss the Constitutional Court’s decision or the jailing of the then president but tries to academically think about the causes of the eruption of public violence. The author explores the politics surrounding the vaccines and the unintended consequences of the lockdown, discusses “what the Church has become” since the outbreak of this virus, and deliberates the impact of “fake-news” in the era of a pandemic.

The Circularity of Integrity and the Politics of Complicity in Thando Mgqolozana’s Unimportance

Thando Mgqolozana's Unimportance traces one night in the life of a student on the verge of being elected Student Representative Council (SRC) president of the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Troublingly, though, the protagonist, Zizi, has physically and verbally abused his girlfriend, Pamodi, and he now fears the imminent revelation of this news. But through the course of one night, Zizi undergoes a seemingly dramatic transformation. Where for much of the narrative he is willing to go to great lengths to ensure that what he has done to Pamodi is not revealed to others, by the end of the story he himself discloses his actions to the student body in the form of a speech. He does so because he comes to the conclusion that he lacks integrity and must act to restore it in himself, even if it costs him his political career. In order to do so, Zizi will renounce the "spectacular" political world for the "ordinary" world of people. In this article, I explore the complexity of the vision of renewal (of Zizi and more broadly of South African politics) that Zizi provides and argue that his development is fundamentally flawed because it is premised on the notion of a personal sense of self that is separate and distinct from the social order. I therefore show that it is inevitable that his change of character does not correlate with a meaningful alteration of his relationship to and ideas on women. Instead, I contend that the novel actually is quite critical of Zizi's so-called transformation precisely because of its limited invocation of responsibility. By way of contrast, I discuss the #RememberKhwezi protest of 2016 and focus on the ways in which it confronted then-President Jacob Zuma, his party, and the wider South African public with their complicity with gender-based violence. What most interests me, finally, is the potential of a South African literature that, like Unimportance, moves beyond ideas of personal culpability and agency in order to explore power and its effects in complex and transformative ways.

SENIOR POLITICAL PERSONALITIES’ IMPACTS ON PUBLIC SECTOR ETHICAL LEADERSHIP PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES

The concept of ethical leadership in the public sector is an intriguing and puzzling endeavor. It is assumed that political leaders, among other things, are first unable to distinguish between their personal and professional moral and ethical leadership dilemmas, and second, they are, either not acutely aware of, or ignorant of the effects that their personal ethical posture while in office has on the perceptions and practice of ethical behavior throughout the public sector and, thus, on the provision of the public goods and services. Leadership, who work for the government, in the public sector has a significant impact on their immediate reports and on the collective conscience of the country. Senior public sector executives naturally establish norms and values that go beyond current regulations and guide moral behavior inside and outside government. By evaluating the influences of the private and public personas of three previous South African state presidents, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, and Jacob Zuma, this essay discusses the theories on which leadership is based. The conceptual basis of the research includes material that was studied from a range of sources, including scholarly publications, popular media pronouncements, and policies. The results imply that a leader’s ethical standing, conduct materialize in people’s beliefs and actions, and impact the provision of services.

Geographies of racial capitalism: the 2021 July riots in South Africa

ABSTRACT In July 2021, riots involving large-scale looting of businesses enveloped parts of South Africa. The “spark” for the violence was the incarceration of the country’s former President, Jacob Zuma. While referring to the broader dynamics of the riots, this article focusses on one township of Durban, Phoenix. Here, the violence was headlined as taking a racial turn, setting African against Indian. By situating the analysis against the African National Congress (ANC) led government’s failure to confront inherited apartheid geographies and racialised forms of capital accumulation, the article foregrounds the explanatory power of racial capitalism, with the understanding that, while “dynamic and changing”, its “temporality … is one of ongoingness … a process not a moment … ”. (12) (Jenkins, D., and J. Leroy. 2021. “Introduction: The Old History of Capitalism.” In Histories of Racial Capitalism, edited by D. Jenkins, and J. Leroy, 1–26. New York: Columbia University Press.).

Images of a nation in crisis

Political cartoonists have, in recent years, faced victimisation for daring to speak truth to power.In December 2010, South African cartoonist, Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro) was sued for portrayingformer President Zuma as a rapist. In February 2018, his contract of over ten years with TheSunday Times was abruptly terminated. These developments show that cartoons can be effectivetools of undermining and resisting power. This article critically analyses Zapiro’s Rape of LadyJustice cartoons in the context of South African politics under Zuma’s presidency. The ANC-ledgovernment under Jacob Zuma was perceived as corrupt and gravitating away from the ideals ofa democratic state. Underpinned by Bal et al.’s (2009) model of caricature, this article seeks toexamine, firstly, how the cartoon, as a medium of expression, pokes fun at its object of caricature,and secondly, how the broader socio-political context of Zuma’s presidency inspired Zapiro’sLady Justice cartoons.

ANYONE BUT YOU, M’LORD: THE TEST FOR RECUSAL OF A JUDICIAL OFFICER

It is trite that judicial officers should perform their adjudicative functions in a trial or hearing without bias or predisposition in favour of any party. Judicial officers must act independently and impartially in discharging their duties (see Van Rooyen v The State 2002 5 SA 246 (CC) par 31). Should this not be the case, a party can move an application for the recusal of the presiding officer. Lately, there have been a number of these applications, including the successful application for the recusal of Ngoepe JP on the first day of therape trial of Jacob Zuma, former Deputy President of South Africa. According to media reports, the reason cited for the recusal was “to protect the credibility of the judiciary” (see “Zuma Judge Steps Aside to Defuse Bias Charges” 2006-02-14 Business Day). Ngoepe JP is alleged to have said:“The legal points for the recusal are not sound and do not hold. However, this is no ordinary matter and is a high-profile case. These considerations invite me to look beyond the personal fears of [Zuma] and take a broader view.”But what are the legal requirements that must be satisfied for a successful application for the recusal of a judicial officer? Before a discussion of the test for recusal, the question of which sources regulate the doctrine of recusal will be briefly discussed.