BRUCE'S LIST: Nkosazana runs into a wall

Bruce’s List: A guide to informed reads.

President Jacob Zuma’s decision to deploy (though his statement used the word “employment”, which is what the constitution uses) 441 soldiers at the opening of parliament and the state of the nation address tomorrow is not only stupid, it is dangerous, for him, on a number of levels. (It needs to be said that Zuma has ordered the employment exactly as the constitution says he should in cases where the defence force operates “in co-operation with the police service”). It’s still a rotten idea though. First, soldiers are not schooled in maintaining public order. Nonetheless, they will be carrying rifles with live ammunition. The safety on an automatic rifle is a mere flick of the thumb while your finger is already on the trigger. In addition, the likelihood that the soldiers will be ordered to fix their bayonets in the course of the day is real. Even if no shot is fired, even if no bayonet is used in anger, the photographs graphically showing an administration afraid of its own citizens will flood the world’s news wires for hours.

The threat of the soldiers being involved in confrontation is real. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have promised big protests at any event Zuma addresses in parliament. So there will be a crowd in front of both the police and army contingents. Tear gas and stun grenades will be used. If you’re not trained for this you are going, absolutely, to be frightened, and it is a frightened human with a gun in his or her hand who frightens me above all things.

The deployment is also dangerous for Zuma as the year unfolds. He has put his weight behind Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to succeed him as ANC president at the party’s election conference in December. In turn, she is already campaigning, building on that support. There is no underestimating the resources — money, staff, intelligence services, protection, transport — that he can put at her disposal and because of that (her own qualities as a party veteran aside) she is a formidable candidate in the race to lead the party.

But as much as Zuma can support her, he can also be a direct threat to her. Every mistake he makes hurts her too because it strengthens his (and, thus, her) opponents. If tomorrow doesn’t end well it will directly damage Dlamini-Zuma. It certainly isn’t starting well. Zuma, not for the first time, has shown that he doesn’t fully appreciate the separation of powers as contained in the constitution. And here’s Pierre de Vos, first on Facebook:  and a fuller item on his blog piece.

As it is, Dlamini-Zuma is in trouble already, in her own right. By signing up to her former husband’s campaign to save himself from prosecution, she is now required to first establish a firm foothold with his political base. This is largely rural and traditional. In other words, it is sexist. Thus the ground has to be prepared and Zuma has already started pounding the drum. “SA is ready for a woman president,” he repeats over and over again. To people in the cities this may sound deeply patronising (it is deeply patronising) but in rural SA it matters. So she is playing the game and appears to have met the Xhosa king, Mpendulo Zwelonke Sigcawu in Willowvale in the Eastern Cape yesterday. If she was looking for his endorsement, she got just the opposite. The Star’s front page lead today contains this devastating paragraph: “Sigcawu said the country was in a mess and therefore not in need of a woman president. ‘The country is not ready for a woman president because even our democratic presidents (previous and current) which are all men have not accomplished their mission of turning it around,’ said Sigcawu.”

That’s what you risk running into when your campaign is based on your gender. It almost makes me want to support her.

Finally, I’ve been meaning to use this for a while. It shows how little impact all of the negative fuss around US president Donald Trump is having on the people who voted for him. Are his critics (me being one infinitesimal part) living in an echo chamber? For now, probably. This was written about 10 days ago but it is a really good read.