Is Zuma looking through these binoculars the wrong way?

A picture from a daily newspaper on Wednesday appears to show President Jacob Zuma at the Armed Forces Day event in Durban trying to get a better view of events.

However, he appears to be using the binoculars the wrong way around, so instead of making distant objects look closer, he would simply have been making everything look even more distant and smaller.

Since the photo was on the front page of The Mercury, a mainstream newspaper, it is highly unlikely to have been photoshopped. It’s possible they could be some kind of new-fangled complicated military-grade binoculars that you need to be a president to be given, and so don’t work the same way as everyone else’s binoculars.

Those lenses facing out looking pretty big, so maybe we should be giving Zuma the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Or maybe it’s just a trick of the light? We leave it to you to decide.

The front page of Wednesday’s Mercury.

The image of him sitting next to his wife Thobeka and the defence minister has been doing the rounds on Twitter.

As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Zuma on Tuesday laid a wreath to honour those who died in the sinking of the SS Mendi 100 years ago and presented medals during Armed Forces Day activities in Durban that included a 300-vehicle parade and capability demonstration.

In spite of wet weather that continued throughout the day, hundreds of members from all four arms of the SANDF paraded past Zuma, who thanked them for answering the call to service.

He said that military service could provide an answer to the youth unemployment crisis.