What is there to celebrate about a man who refuses to do right by his children?

At what point do we admit the abusive nature of the man that is Jacob Zuma. We are all in agreement about the abuses he committed to the economy and the nation.

Many men in the country scurry to justify his patriarchal behaviour. They say some matters are personal and are matters to be discussed by the family; matters that may never leave the table at the Nkandla homestead. But his acts of abuse do. They go as far as the Netherlands in search of asylum in the form of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo, better known as Khwezi until her death.

His abuses go as far as Johannesburg’s West Park Cemetery where Kate Mantsho was laid to rest. Zuma was banned from attending her funeral as she labelled her marriage to him as “24 years of hell”.

More recently, they reached guesthouses in Greytown, where ex-wife Mantuli Zuma was banished and she and her children would sleep together on a double bed in a tiny room. Today, the tale is that of Tobeka Madiba, Zuma’s estranged wife who must plead poverty for him to take responsibility for their shared child.

When one of the mothers of his children was given almost exclusive rights to raise their child without his interference, it should have spoken volumes. Sonono Khoza has guardianship over the minor love child, including that she will be responsible for the maintenance of the child, including medical, educational and all extramural expenses.

What is there to celebrate about a man who refuses to do right by his children? Nothing frustrates me more than a man or woman who can provide for his offspring, but elects not to. While his alleged abuses of Kuzwayo remain a “he said, she said” episode, his track record does not make pretty reading.

I shudder at the thought of what it must be like to be a wife to a man with so many apologists surrounding him that he remains charismatic to his followers, while women suffer at his hands.

Kekeletso Nakeli-Dhliwayo.

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