What will happen when President Thabo Mbeki goes? Few questions are exercising the political punditocracy as much as this one.
Deputy President Jacob Zuma still seems to be the strongest contender for the presidency, even though his financial affairs are central to what is probably the biggest corruption trial of the new South Africa. His popularity remains strong, and he has given no sign that his ambition is diminished by embarrassing evidence in a Durban courtroom.
And so we can prepare ourselves for a lot of coverage of the succession issue and all its subsidiary themes: minute dissection of the trial, Zuma’s personal life, other contenders, debates and differences within the African National Congress and much else.
In this context, the Mail & Guardian recently speculated about the first year of a Zuma presidency. Liberally illustrated with cartoons, the piece “reported” that Zuma’s first official act would be to rename the Union Buildings as the Fikile Mbalula Buildings, after the ANC Youth League leader who has gone out on a limb in his support.
That was January. By June, Zuma was replacing the Scorpions with a new unit, the Pussycats, which would not be able to investigate anybody above the rank of cleaner. By August, Zuma was marking National Women’s Day by taking a fifth wife and offering to help with virginity testing.
By the next month, Zuma’s minister of finance, Schabir Shaik, was proposing a 20% salary increase for all office-bearers. The year ended with Mbeki — now ambassador to the African Union — writing a weekly Internet column, Letter from the ex-president.
Some readers and interested parties took offence at the spoof. Satire can be a refuge of scoundrels, said an SMS to the editor from Mo Shaik, Schabir’s brother, who was named as minister of intelligence in the piece.
An adviser to Zuma called it gutter journalism. And another official in his office accused the M&G of dealing in fiction.
A reader, L Nogcinisa, said treating Zuma in this way would simply solidify his support. “The reckless actions of the media, including the M&G, have effectively closed the little space there was for sober-minded ANC members to analyse and debate the succession issue.” Mbalula and others had been given ammunition “to associate dissenting voices with an anti-ANC ‘elite'”.
Another reader wrote: “Leave Deputy President Jacob Zuma alone!”
There’s little chance of that. As a candidate for the highest office in the land, he and his supporters will have to get used to scrutiny.
Also, the newspaper can’t pull its punches because it thinks it might drive more people into one camp or another. Tactical considerations of this kind have no place in journalism.
But the more serious question is whether the spoof overstepped the bounds of fairness.
The piece made no attempt to present itself as anything other than satire. No reader could have thought the piece was serious reportage, even if they had just read the first sentence, “President Zuma is inaugurated at the Union Buildings”.
A series of assumptions about Zuma underpinned the piece. The humour relied on a very unflattering view of the deputy president as corrupt, given to cronyism and as holding some very dubious attitudes to women.
I didn’t think the humour always worked. At one point, Zuma was painted as behaving like a buffoon at an African heads of state meeting, referring to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo as a “guy with a long dress and a funny hat”. The image may be amusing, but it only becomes telling satire if the suggestion is being made that Zuma is inept in continental diplomacy. Was that the intention, or was it simply an arbitrary rock to throw at Zuma?
But a lack of subtlety is hardly a crime. Ultimately, the piece was like a cartoon: it made fun of Zuma, and drew conclusions that more serious reportage or analysis would avoid. Was it fair? Probably not. But satire doesn’t have to be.
If you’re going to contend for the country’s top job, you should be prepared to take this kind of thing on the chin.
M&G owner Trevor Ncube is a former journalist and a respected commentator. As the controversial election campaign in his home country, Zimbabwe, unfolds before the fascinated eyes of the rest of the sub-continent, it is hardly surprising to find his views sought out by a range of media.
Last week, the M&G published a thoughtful, if apparently despairing, piece by Ncube that said President Robert Mugabe was the only person who could “extricate Zimbabwe from its quagmire”. Nobody else in the ruling Zanu-PF party or the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had the stuff to resolve the country’s problems, he said. It was a detailed and interesting piece of political analysis, going far beyond the superficialities that often dominate coverage of Zimbabwe.
It also closely resembled a piece he wrote for the Financial Mail (FM), which appeared the day before the M&G. In that piece, too, Ncube was sharply critical of both main Zimbabwean parties, and made the point that Mugabe was the only person who could force his party to make necessary changes.
The FM identified him simply as a “Zimbabwean publisher and former journalist” — with no mention of the M&G. The effect was unfortunate. Was he embarrassed by his association with the paper he owns? Or could the FM not bring itself to mention the name of a rival publication?
There is no great overlap in readership between the two publications, but those who do look at both will have had a strong sense of déjà vu. Editor Ferial Haffajee was made to look a bit foolish by publishing a variant of a piece that had just appeared in another publication. If I was her, I’d have a word with the boss.