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President Jacob Zuma has been described variously as a strategist, a master chess player, a conniving politician, a devious character, and a dishonest and greedy leader.
But have we ever thought that he may be something else?
You know what I mean. That he should be confined to a certain place where people like him are confined.
You are probably thinking of prison. Yes, that too.
But there is that other place – where there is supervision, medication and strapping.
This thought was running through my mind as I observed the man in action.
Remember his performance in Parliament the other week?
As usual, he did his customary “heh-heh-heh” chortle in between weaving and bobbing questions.
To DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s question concerning how much he had spent fighting attempts to help him clear his name, all he could say was: “I haven’t spent the money; the government has spent the money.”
Geddit? He hasn’t spent the money.
Rather, it is you, dear taxpayers, who have spent the money. So, please leave him alone.
When he appeared in the National Council of Provinces this week, the president was even more perplexing.
Clearly stung by recently published books that have laid bare his nauseatingly corrupt ways, he took a dig at literature.
Not surprising at all, since the only written words he can properly recognise are those on banknotes.
“People know they can’t discuss anything. They try not to sleep, reading the books, uh-huh, all the lies and speculation and imagination of people,” News24 quoted him as saying.
“...Jirrrrr. Novels! It is people who sit down and just think and composition of people (sic).” Jirrrrr indeed.
About the same time, Zuma headed for the Gauteng township of Kagiso, ostensibly to deliver a lecture on liberation icon Oliver Tambo.
But when he got there, he forgot the reason he was not spending his Sunday enjoying MaNgema’s anti-diabetes lunch recipes.
Zuma spent the day defending his own legacy, hitting out at supposed enemies and not so subtly punting the presidential campaign of a certain person who helped him add to his large brood.
This veteran of the struggle and former communist then ventured into a bizarre mangling of history and a distortion of South Africa’s transition to lend legitimacy to his coterie’s preferred nuclear deal partner.
He told his rent-a-crowd audience (most local ANC cadres were not so keen on this do, and some busing-in had to be done) that today’s Russia was a good friend of South Africa because it supported the struggle, while the West opposed it.
“Of the two forces, one rejected us and one supported us. We were trained by the Soviet Union. They gave us weapons. We fought and we were liberated.”
While this is partly true, the fact is that today’s Kremlin is nothing like the Soviets who backed liberation struggles in Africa and the rest of the developing world.
The party that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin leads is supported by narrow-minded nationalists, bigots and anti-progressives.
The capitalist oligarchy built up around Putin makes America’s worst capitalists look saintly.
And Russian communists – the survivors and successors of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – are no friends of Putin.
What’s more, Putin believes the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that gave birth to the Soviet Union was a big mistake.
Zuma then went further off-mark, confusing nuclear energy with nuclear armaments.
In a bid to discredit critics of the Russia-favouring nuclear energy deal he is pushing, he claimed that the West had told the National Party government on the eve of democracy that they must “destroy their nuclear power because communists cannot get hold of them”.
“They said they can never control nuclear because they are communist. That is the history of nuclear,” Zuma told his cheering audience.
If the person who is supposed to sign off on a trillion-rand programme cannot tell the difference between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, then we are seriously in the dwang.
This week, Zuma was hosted by GuptaTV, the same channel that had days earlier hosted the lady with whom he previously engaged in reproductive activities.
Among other things, Zuma told the very nice man who was conducting the faux interview that he had been given “quite a strong poison” and that some powers see strong African leaders as enemies and “I’m one of those”.
He said many of those pushing for a commission of inquiry into state capture “will regret” because “it’s not going to be choosy” and “going to go to those who have done wrong things”.
So, wherever you are, Jan van Riebieck, Paul Kruger, DF Malan and HF Verwoerd, be very afraid. Msholozi is coming for you.
Zuma said a lot of crazy things to that nice chap from GuptaTV, indicating that we should be worried about more than just his thieving and incompetence.
This week, people have been rude about the nice chap from GuptaTV.
They just don’t know that maybe – while sitting opposite Number One – he looked into his eyes and saw the vacant look and decided he could not challenge the craziness.
South Africans, take a cue from the nice man from GuptaTV.
He knows something we don’t.
The situation here could be much more dangerous than we have hitherto believed. Being run by a incurable kleptomaniac liar is one thing.
But being run by an insane kleptomaniac liar is something else.
So, the next time you listen to what he says or analyse his decisions, ask yourself: Is there a clinical condition we need to be concerned about?
