The Faculty of Humanities at Rhodes University is hosting a seminar that looks into the rise and current vulnerability of Jacob Zuma as ANC and State President within the context of ANC history. The seminar will take place on Monday 15 March at 5pm in the Humanities Faculty Seminar Room.
The paper examines the extent to which the Zuma phenomenon was one of a range of trajectories that derive from a history that has a range of ambiguities as well as unfinished business. The work is related to the transition from 1994, where it is argued that from Mandela onwards the masses have tended to be spectators while government delivers, and the ANC as an organisation has been run down.
Mbeki increased centralisation and patronage systems and Zuma was closely allied to Mbeki. The rise of Zuma is unrelated to ideology, but more to disaffection from Mbeki and desperation on the part of the masses for a better life, which alliance leaders projected Zuma as capable of providing. In so doing they created a mythology around Zuma as an umbrella which allowed a hunt for loot and power at the top.
From early on the Zuma project has been marked by extensive violence, in particular violent masculinities. It is a markedly patriarchal phenomenon, manifested in Zuma’s own sexual escapades, the failure to grasp conventional gender issues relating to the public/private division as well as attacks on homosexuals, in particular an epidemic of murders of African lesbians.
The dropping of fraud charges against Zuma, his reluctance to declare his interests as required by the and a range of public evidence of shady financial dealings by his followers have left the ship steered by a patently flawed captain, while the vessel suffers from serious damage, impeding its future journey. The potential post-Zuma future is considered, through identifying elements of an emancipatory platform.
Raymond Suttner is currently a research professor at UNISA in Pretoria. He has held positions at four South African universities and been a fellow at Jadavpur University in Kolkata/Calcutta, India. He holds a cross-disciplinary PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in sociology, politics and history and has received an honorary doctorate from Netaji Subhas University in Calcutta, India for contribution to higher education.
Suttner has over 75 published works, ranging over foreign affairs, politics, criminology, human rights, gender and sexualities studies, questions of knowledge and heritage, customary law and legal theory. These include Fifty Years of the Freedom Charter (with Jeremy Cronin, 2007), Inside Apartheid’s Prison (2001) and The ANC underground (2008). Suttner is preparing a book on the Zuma era in ANC history, likely to appear late in 2010.