This odd image of ANC presidential candidate Jacob Zuma accompanies a long piece on South Africa–ahead of its April 22 general elections–in Portfolio magazine (that’s a monthly business magazine by the people who publish The New Yorker). You don’t need to be a fan of Zuma to see that the image is meant to present him as a scary figure. In fact, the picture caption reads “Threat or Savior?” and he is later referred to as a “militant populist.”
Anyway, the piece is written by Andrew Rice, who seems to write about every African country.
This is how the editors sell the piece:
The fall of apartheid made many people in South Africa—white and black—fabulously rich. Now, with the militant populist Jacob Zuma all but certain to become president and a crippling economic downturn looming, the country is divided not by color but by wealth.
As promised the piece focuses on South Africa’s business class. Though it is based on some good old-fashioned reporting, I have to agree with a well-informed friend (that is on matters South Africa) that it is ” … quite substantive, but paranoid and full of gross generalizations [with] some interesting tit-bits in between.”
Readers might find the opinions of South Africa’s business class–both white and, increasingly, black very interesting. Take Peter Vundla, former advertising executive and now investment banker who has been close to the ruling ANC for a while (his brother is Mfundi Vundla, the TV producer and their father was a leading ANC activist). Vundla tells Rice that South Africa could be “another Kenya.” Rice also quotes a columnist in daily newspaper Business Day talking about “‘Nigerianization.”
Here’s two more gems:
Steven Friedman, director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy in Johannesburg, has been giving talks about the ANC succession struggle to groups of investment bankers, most of whom are white. In these closed-door meetings, he says, his audiences have expressed sometimes hysterical fears about South Africa’s future stability. “It’s a mixture of legitimate concern and—I’m trying to find a nice word for it—cultural ‘uncomfortability,’ ” he says. “A guy who dresses in leopard skins, has several wives, and sings about machine guns is not going to put those fears to rest, to put it mildly.”
…
The members of this upper echelon, both white and black, became rich under the ANC of Mandela and his successor, Mbeki, and now they can no longer be so certain of a profitable relationship with the government. Publicly, they take pains not to criticize Zuma harshly, but privately, after a few drinks, their true feelings spill out. “I think he’s a half-wit,” a thirtyish white businessman confided to a friend a few nights before at a wood-paneled bar next to the Hyatt. “I’m afraid we could have another Kenya situation on our hands.”
