Zuma supporters counting on government to respond with violence 

There is a question that Jacob Zuma always asks whenever he is cornered.

The first time he asked the question was at the height of the protests demanding his removal from office in 2018.

“What have I done wrong?”

When his comrades turned on him after having helped him survive 10 motions of no confidence in parliament, when they sent his deputy at the time, Cyril Ramaphosa, to help convince him to resign, he decided to hang on to power a while longer, repeatedly asking that rhetorical question: “What have I done wrong?”

The protests currently engulfing KwaZulu-Natal and some parts of Gauteng have as their theme song Wenzeni uZuma? (What has Zuma done wrong?).

There is nothing new in the way the former president and his camp have pushed the narrative that he is a victim of forces much bigger than him. The shocking thing is just how well some of his supporters have internalised the victimhood angle that his camp has been pushing since he lost power.

His camp, through their radical economic transformation (RET) machinery, has repeatedly painted the story of a simple man who only had the best interests of poor black people at heart and is now paying the price because of his noble stance.

The current violence clearly shows how well the RET propaganda machinery has worked in getting ordinary folks to believe that Zuma is their knight in shining armour who has always had their interests at heart.

There is no sane person who will risk jail by participating in the torching of 37 long-distance delivery trucks without being fully convinced of the justness of the cause they are fighting for.

Spreading propaganda is no longer the sole preserve of dictators in power. Even former presidents who subjected their country’s citizens to a decade of misrule have access to social media, as well as sympathetic print media to spread their message.

Carl Niehaus and his uMkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association knew that if they appeared in the media every day preaching Zuma’s innocence, at some point they would get enough sympathy to spark a rebellion. Well, they have
succeeded to an extent.

Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels knew how to create an illusion of the truth: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”

The violence is not unexpected; it had been preached from so many platforms before it happened. The only way that Zuma and his camp will win through this violence and intimidation is if, somehow, the rest of the country caves in.

The violence is aimed at achieving what they cannot achieve through the courts. Right now, the country needs government to stand firm.

The people behind the protests are counting on the state to match their violent conduct with violence. In fact, it was one of their threats before Zuma handed himself in: if Ramaphosa and his government go ahead with the arrest, there
will be a bloodbath similar to the Marikana massacre.

The most noble thing Zuma could do right now would be to denounce the violence, but that’s asking for the impossible.