THE CHARMING MAN AND HIS MACHINE GUN

Jacob Zuma needs to clarify his stance on the use of violence to advance his cause, whether in next year’s election or at any other time.

Even in the US, where the right to bear arms is so fiercely defended, there would be outrage if the supporters of Barack Obama or John McCain went around chanting for the
hero’s machine guns to be brought to them as they campaigned for the presidency.

Yet here in South Africa the chants of Jacob Zuma’s supporters have by now been taken as a given and generally shrugged off. Mr Zuma’s various efforts to re-assure farmers in the Free State, poor white communities in Pretoria, and business groups abroad have all but eclipsed the ‘bring me my machine gun’ war cry.

Why? Does nobody take Zuma’s war cry seriously? Not even when some of his leading lieutenants threaten to kill for the revolution, which in practice means kill for him? The Human Rights Commission, the supposed public watchdog against this kind of thing, was too
cowardly to draw the required line in the sand. In effect, it condoned the killing talk.

One of the Zuma supporters up before the Human Rights Commission was Mr Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, some of whose affiliates have a track record of killing. Vavi himself used killing talk during the security strike in which some 60 nonstrikers were killed two years ago. On his recent repeat of killing talk, he said merely that he regretted that it offended ‘some people’s sensitivities’.

Mr Julius Malema, leader of the ANC youth league and another Zuma supporter, has been threatening to ‘intensify the struggle to eliminate the remnants of counter-revolution, which include the DA [Democratic Alliance]’ and others seeking to prevent Zuma from becoming president of the country.

These are menacing words at any time, but especially ominous with an election due in less than a year’s time. Thuggery in language can easily slide into thuggery on the ground, and into thuggery in government.