JUSTICE MALALA: How Zuma plans to mobilise against Ramaphosa
'Last week, Zuma supporters gathered at the symbol of the man's grand and comedic corruption – the grotesque Nkandla and its famed fire pool – to “welcome him back” to KwaZulu-Natal'
EXTRACT
In KwaZulu-Natal last week a member of the ANC national executive committee turned around to me and said: “You have to ask yourself, why do white people like Cyril Ramaphosa so much?”
At the heart of the new Zuma political movement is this question and their answer to it: that Ramaphosa is a sellout, that he is a stooge of so-called white monopoly capital, that his fight against corruption (at least for now) is really a fight against black advancement.
This is the sort of conspiratorial and nonsensical thinking that was invented and disseminated by the defunct British disinformation machinery of Bell Pottinger as paid for by the Gupta family and Zuma's son Duduzane. On Twitter, sitting on his cash pile in Dubai, these are messages that are still disseminated by the president's son as part of his escape from facing the law in South Africa.
News that a shiny, straight-out-of-the box political formation built around Jacob Zuma is on the cards is actually old hat. Those of us who have watched Zuma's actions over the past few years and months have always known that, as the light of his kleptocratic state dimmed, he would forge a new populist path to defend himself and his cronies from going to jail. The script is unfolding like clockwork. Last week, Zuma supporters gathered at the symbol of the man's grand and comedic corruption – the grotesque Nkandla and its famed fire pool – to “welcome him back” to KwaZulu-Natal. It was nothing of the sort. They were launching part of their fight-back campaign, as I pointed out here months ago.What is really of interest now is this: What is their thinking? What holds them together? What are their motives? In KwaZulu-Natal last week a member of the ANC national executive committee turned around to me and said: “You have to ask yourself, why do white people like Cyril Ramaphosa so much?...
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