Supporters of embattled African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma have embarked on a new grassroots attempt to bolster his popularity, which appears closely related to his launch of a series of record-breaking defamation suits against the media.
Pro-Zuma activists have fanned out to show a controversial underground documentary, The Zuma Media Trial, at ANC branches in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. The Eastern Cape and Limpopo are the next stops in a planned countrywide tour, said Zuma confidant Ellias Khumalo.
During these political road shows, they will be showing the video, made by independent film producer Liesl Gottert, and they will conduct impromptu political education lessons.
The video, which has been promoted on a website, but which has not been generally released, drums up support for the theory that there is a plot orchestrated by some in the ruling party to stymie Zuma’s chance of replacing Thabo Mbeki as both the ANC and South Africa’s president.
The documentary was filmed between 2003 and 2005 ahead of the corruption and fraud trial of Zuma’s former financial adviser Schabir Shaik. It suggests that Zuma was being tried and found guilty by the media and that there was a plot led by Mbeki, former director of public prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka and ANC national executive committee member and businessperson Saki Macozoma to ensure Zuma did not ascend to the presidency.
The allegations in the documentary, of course, dovetail neatly with Zuma’s claim, now to be pursued via the courts, that he has been defamed by the media.
Publicity work around the defamation lawsuits has been done by a new entity called ”the Office of Jacob Zuma”. The Star this week linked Gottert to this entity saying she was the spokesperson for Zuma on matters relating to the defamation lawsuits with advocate Jurg Prinsloo, a former Conservative Party MP, leading Zuma’s defence team.
The grassroots video campaign, as well as the defamation action against the media, comes as Zuma’s platform to advance his own cause has become more limited.
There have been attempts from within the ruling party to haul Zuma before its disciplinary committee for embarrassing utterances he made during his rape trial and to set the terms of his participation in public gatherings.
Zuma’s supporters have been at pains trying to organise public events for the former deputy president to air his views without further upsetting sentiment within the ANC’s governing structures. Zuma was relatively free to speak his mind during the time he had relinquished his duties as ANC deputy president, but can be more easily reined in now that he is back in his role as one of the party’s top office bearers.
”Basically Baba [father] is in a position where he can be easily called for a disciplinary by the ANC for anything he says publicly and is also at the mercy of the party in terms of being given a platform on major national events,” said Zuma aide Ranjeni Munusamy.
”At the moment only the members of the tripartite alliance [Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party] and the youth organisations are giving him the platform in their events as was the case in Durban during the June 16 celebrations,” she said.
The grassroots campaign also comes amid increased pressure from the ANC national executive committee to close down the Friends of Jacob Zuma website. During its meeting last month Mbeki complained that faceless people were using the site to hurl insults at him, his administration, deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and various senior ANC members perceived to be anti-Zuma, a source in the Zuma camp claimed.
In some cases, the site has been used to mobilise for the disruption of government events such as a 2005 visit to Ilembe District Municipality by Mbeki and his deputy as part of the presidential imbizos and the disruption of a government event at Utreght in KwaZulu-Natal where Mlambo-Ngcuka was speaking last year.
The Mail & Guardian recently attended a showing of The Zuma Media Trial in KwaMashu. Branch members and community members believed to be Zuma supporters were called to a dilapidated hall where broken windows were covered with blankets while the documentary was shown.
”It worked like a charm. People are now getting an opportunity to see for themselves what we have been telling them all along; that the legal battles facing Msholozi are a result of a political conspiracy,” said Kuki Mbanjwa, an ANC branch leader who has been at the heart of the campaigns in KwaZulu-Natal.
”Overall we are happy with the response that we are getting from people across KwaZulu-Natal and Johannesburg, where we arranged three successful mass presentations,” said Mbanjwa.