PETER BRUCE: Say what you like, Zuma’s got your back
What wasn’t widely reported about Maine’s ‘impimpi’ remark was that Zuma was sitting listening to him when he said it
So, you may remember that last weekend, the head of the ANC Youth League, Collen Maine, addressing a meeting of his members in KwaZulu Natal, launched a furious attack on finance minister Pravin Gordhan. This was after the budget which, in Maine’s and other President Jacob Zuma sympathisers’ views, did not adequately mirror Zuma’s state of the nation speech 10 days earlier. Gordon, said Maine, was an “impimpi” (a spy) for white monopoly capital and should be dealt with. This is a terrifying thing to say. Maine is just a stupid young man but in the days of the struggle, and the years around the birth of our democracy, the charge of being an “impimpi” and being “dealt with” meant that you would be killed. Often a mob who believed you were an impimpi would tie your hands behind your back and place a burning tyre over your head, a method of murder we know here in SA as “necklacing”.What wasn’t widely reported about Maine’s remarks — or at least if it was I missed it — is that Zuma was s...
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