So you are sitting in the aisle of a domestic flight to Durban, flapping your knees out of the way of the drinks trolley. You casually glance across the way and who do you see two rows back?
None other than the former President of South Africa, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma!
“Hold onto your knickers… and your wallet,” some rather cruel people posted on social media afterwards. Not our star sales person Shannon Trollip, who was actually quite excited. So were the rest of the passengers, who were obviously more used to reading about the former Number One being ferried about in blue light brigades, Gupta private jets, SA Air Force choppers and even his own Boeing (when it was working).
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There was this ‘ogre-to-many’, casually fraternising and taking selfies with the other ‘plebs’ in ‘cattle class’!
OK, so he might well have been trying to upstage our current Number One, Cyril Ramaphosa, who did the same thing a few weeks back and is often seen casually going walkabout with the masses.
But the untouchable JayZee?
With his trademark ‘heh-heh’ smile, he was very happy to pose twice for a selfie with our Shannon (the first one was fuzzy) and everyone else.
What was quite sad was some of the reaction to Shannon’s photograph which was posted on our Facebook and printed in the Herald afterwards. Some said they would ‘rather die than pose with someone like Zuma’.
Bulldust! Regardless of what one might think of his term in office (which was certainly fraught with all sorts of controversy, whether justified, proven or not), the fact remains, he is still a ‘personality’ who will go down in history, whether for his good or bad deeds.
Would any of us really have passed up an opportunity for a selfie?
Yet our country seems to be so polarised by politics that we want to cut off our noses to spite our scrapbooks.
Another example, Carlos Santana, who is arguably one of the greatest guitarists in the world, is in South Africa and some of us are excited to be going to see him play at the ICC Centre in Durban this Friday.
The reaction on social media? “Boycott Santana because he refuses to condemn Israel!”
It was the same with Cat Stevens when he was here: Shock, horror… “He turned to Islam!”
Hey! Who cares what their political or religious convictions are?
They are great musicians…
And Zuma is also worth ‘two-million-seven-and… err, listen now… and-twenty-something’ worth of entertainment.
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