Zuma’s gun talk must be silenced

Jacob Zuma may be doing an impression of the Big Bad Wolf, but no matter how much he and his MK Party supporters huff and puff, they won’t shake the National Assembly, nor prevent it from carrying out its constitutional duty.

Complaining that there have been massive irregularities in the counting and vote tally reconciliation process following last week’s elections, MK has threatened to boycott the swearing-in of MPs for the National Assembly.

In so doing, they reckon, there will not physically be enough MPs present for parliament to be formally constituted.

That argument, though, has been shot down by political and constitutional experts, who point out that by declaring the final results of the election, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) effectively declared each party’s MP numbers to be duly elected lawmakers.

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Whether they actually pitch up to parliament is irrelevant.

In this day and age of misinformation and fake news – and the sophisticated ways in which it is disseminated, especially by MK’s spin doctors – we should expect more of these publicity stunts from Zuma and co.

What is more worrying, though, is his threats of violence.

That should never be tolerated. We cannot have a rerun of 2021.

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