Duduzane Zuma poses for a photograph following an interview at Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, 17 May 2023. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen
Duduzane Zuma has set his sights on the highest office in the land, state president, and he intends to climb up over the rubble of the collapsed ANC to get there.
While admitting that “everyone has skeletons in their closet”, he doesn’t think his family’s name or history is an impediment to his ambitions.
He wants to be the voice of the angry, the disillusioned and those who feel powerless.
He’s good-looking, charismatic and he wants to change South Africa’s current politics, which are a malaise of rhetoric and much ado about nothing.
Zuma plans to stand for president in next year’s general election if the Electoral Act is changed in time to allow individuals to do so.
Otherwise, he will have to form a party, get elected as leader, and contest the elections in the current proportional representation system.
In 2020, the Constitutional Court ruled the Electoral Act unconstitutional, opening the door for anyone to stand for election as president, political party or not.
It gave 2022 as the deadline for amending the Act, but a year after that deadline there is no sign of it happening anytime soon.
The amendment will reshape SA politics and may aid in levelling a currently off-kilter playing field. It could also significantly broaden the potential of a coalition government formed at the whim of executive privilege.
Either way, said Zuma, he’s in the race. Zuma does not shy away from talking about anything. Unlike other political leaders, he doesn’t block people on social media, he looks you straight in the eye and responds without hesitating.
ALSO READ: ‘Go big or go home’: Duduzane Zuma to contest 2024 elections
He doesn’t speak in hashtags nor beat around the bush. It’s refreshing.
While the presidency was not something he had considered before, the mess the country is in has driven him to do something about it.
He said: “It is the hopes and aspirations I carry on behalf of the majority. It’s the need for change. I think we all understand there’s a need for change, but a lot of us are back-seat drivers.
Let’s take the bull by the horns. “There are a lot of things that don’t add up. We’ve been fed a lot of false information and false narratives.
The power crisis, for example, is definitely man-made, and it can be undone and fixed. So too, can a lot of other challenges.”
A businessman with an entrepreneurial spirit, Zuma, who turns 41 tomorrow, is a protagonist for a free market.
That’s the only way to attract investment and facilitate trade in an environment where SA is close to being viewed as a pariah, he said.
“I am a capitalist through and through and I believe in business.” “Let’s focus on South Africa. That’s where we must start: investment in business, investment into re-industrialising our country, getting people to work.
“We’re not here to offer people jobs. We must create opportunities for people to get those jobs. The only way to create those opportunities is by creating investment opportunities.” If – or when, as he said – he leads the country, problems will have to be tackled in rapid succession, starting with stability, and that begins with the country’s flaccid energy supply.
He also hinted the civil service would have to be shaken up. “There are a lot of people that must go – from the top down.”
A Duduzane Zuma Cabinet would also not comprise a gratuitous legion of the politically deployed. His interest is in fixing the country fast – and that can only be done with technocrats.
His pedigree is undeniably ANC, but he said the organisation has lost its way. “I am appreciative of the movement [but] they had their time. It’s over now.”
Zuma admitted he has baggage, a measure of it quite heavy, but said he’s an open book. “Anyone can ask me anything,” he said, citing his relationship with the first family of state capture: “I had a business relationship with the Guptas; it had a beginning and a natural end.
I have testified about it in the Zondo commission.” He’s been described as a fugitive, arrested and berated over his involvement in an old gold mine.
Everyone has their skeletons, he said, and he is prepared to be open about it all. The Zuma family name is not an albatross around his neck, he said.
He is proud of his family and won’t renounce his name or reject where he comes from. Instead, he believes in his own convictions, which are different from his father – former president Jacob Zuma – and other family members.
He has business interests in mining in West Africa and Dubai was his home for almost eight years while he worked in the tech space, focusing on advancements in artificial intelligence and digital process efficiency.
He has recently launched a sporting franchise that progresses the entertainment value of extreme martial arts. Zuma’s message is one of unity.
He doesn’t view life through racially tinted glasses.
He also doesn’t believe that broad-based black economic empowerment in its present form is working. He is a believer in a meritocracy and mobilising people to get up and effect change from within their communities.
“I believe we are at the point of critical mass because people are looking for change. And I believe that this is what we are going to do.”
NOW READ: Duduzane Zuma to take his presidential ambitions to TEDx in September
– news@citizen.co.za
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.
