In the end the revolution really was televised. And Tweeted and TikTok-ed and WhatsApp-ed. Except, it wasn’t a revolution. It was the dying spurts of an overlord and his loyal sidekicks. This was, more than anything else, the final throes of the Jacob Zuma era. The "end of an error" has never seemed a more appropriate description.
It was also a seminal moment in our country’s extraordinary journey. From pariah state to the rainbow nation and then to those terrible "nine lost years"; and now this generation that has defied the attempted "insurrection" of Zuma’s acolytes when he was finally jailed.
Was it the vainglorious Duduzane Zuma’s monotonous and uninspired WhatsApp videos — the last one of which he unconvincingly distances himself from the violence that erupted in his father’s name — that signalled the end?
Or was it Carl Niehaus’s dismal appearance on an evangelical TV show, the last broadcaster that was willing to give the known fraudster and Zuma sycophant a platform?
Zuma played his trump card. It’s now common cause that his acolytes organised an "insurrection", as President Cyril Ramaphosa correctly named it. They started truck fires on the N3, seemingly steered starving and hapless looters towards shopping malls and industrial complexes in Durban; and then let that irresponsible fire keep burning.
Who could have foreseen that the taxi industry would become an unofficial security force?
Very soon, it was out of control. The week of looting and burning that followed was a devastating blow to the country, and to an already broken economy. Durban alone estimates its losses at R15bn. Countless small businesses won’t recover. The small town of Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal has reportedly no shops left after they were all burnt.
Meanwhile Moody’s added insult to injury when it downgraded — to junk status — most of the country’s cities. This is literally where Zuma and the ANC have brought SA: to junk status.
But there is a silver lining, despite how arduously some agitators attempt to immolate our country. The communities standing guard outside their suburbs and protecting nearby shopping malls are the defining image for me of this horrible episode in our history. As are the widespread clean-ups by local residents of their shattered streets and shops.
And who could have foreseen that the taxi industry — so often the cause of violence — would become an unofficial security force, protecting their own interests, to be sure, but protecting their communities?
And the state capture enabler-in-chief is in jail. Just like mobster Al Capone, who was finally caught for tax evasion, Zuma is in jail for the significantly lesser crime of contempt of court than that of selling out his own country. But he’s in jail. That’s what matters.
We have survived the dying throes of the Zuma years. Now if only we can put the same collective effort behind the Springboks winning the British & Irish Lions series, please …
Shapshak is publisher of stuff.co.za and Scrolla.Africa
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