I know a lot of the news these days is grim, but as I watched MK party members celebrate Jacob Zuma’s 83rd birthday over the weekend, and recalled Dali Mpofu telling a court in 2022 that it was as a “jurisdictional fact” that Zuma had to be released from prison because he was “suffering from a terminal disease”, I was reminded that despite the gloom, miracles do sometimes happen.
I’m not talking about Zuma’s continued robustness, of course: that would be in poor taste. But that robustness does bring other miracles to mind, like how no big pharmaceutical company has yet bottled Schabir Shaik’s terminal illness so that we can all add decades to our lives.
There’s also the almost supernatural speed with which so many ANC supporters have gone from claiming to want constitutional democracy to prostrating themselves before SA’s leading proponent of neo-feudalism.
I understand why MK’s Grand Panjandrum, Floyd Shivambu, flung himself downon the royal slipper, praising the “Commander General” for his “humility, courage, consistency, honesty and respect for all our people” who “cherish your leadership and guidance”.
Shivambu at least defected to Zuma from another Ponzi scheme that also wants an agrarian day zero — but the other fart-catchers have definitely undergone a miraculous transformation.
To be fair, the miracles aren’t limited to Zuma’s admirers. Consider, for example, those South Africans I encounter on social media every day who can explain to me in forensic detail how Zuma is the head of a personality cult that will wreck democracy to enrich itself, but who — when presented with almost identical facts about US President Donald Trump — magically transform into anarchists, explaining that democracy is a stale and outdated liberal fantasy that needs to be purged by the cleansing fire of oligarchy.
In their defence, there are a few important differences between Zuma and Trump. Zuma, I’m sure, never profited us much as Trump has from trying to crash his country’s economy. Certainly, Zuma could only watch in awe on Wednesday as Trump tweeted “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” and then promptly paused tariffs, causing markets to surge 7% and his own company’s stock to skyrocket 25%. (Investors in Trump Media weren’t the only winners: publishers of finance textbooks will now be able to save on paper by removing the entire chapter on insider trading and replacing it with that tweet.)
But the similarities between the two courts are glaring right now, especially after Thursday’s remarkable cabinet meeting in the US, during which select media was allowed to come and film Trump’s grand viziers all taking turns to praise him before reporting on various successes.
Certainly, US attorney-general Pam Bondi put the entire MK party praise-singing squad to shame as she told Trump that he had been “overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority” (he topped out at 49.8% of the vote) and that “you have the authority to determine how the money of this country will be spent” (he doesn’t), while others told him that “Main Street is grateful to you”, presumably for trying to make it poorer and thereby helping it see what’s really important in life, like tech billionaires.
Yes, this is a time of miracles. But perhaps the greatest wonder of all is how so many people who loudly proclaim they are fighting for freedom want so badly to be oppressed, and how those who talk endlessly about a bright future are so determined to return to the past. It’s all got very peculiar, very quickly. And that, as Mpofu would say, is a jurisdictional fact.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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