Zuma is not to blame.

Anyone who has a degree will have undergone the unpleasant experience of being told, by someone without a degree, that his education is worthless, that life’s experiences are more valuable than book learning, that people who come out of university are worth much less than those who took the opportunity to experience the real world while the university worm was locked away in valueless lectures.  One learns to ignore these stupidities, gaining the understanding that the un-degreed critic simply does not have the understanding to realise the value of the educational experience,  Trying to convince such people of the value of learning to think in a structured way, integrating learning, experience, observation and the valid views of others is a waste of time.  Some un-degreed people have the ability to break out of the mould they have been born into, but, unfortunately, many of them are unable to stretch their minds beyond the slogans, the sensational statements of others of their ilk, the tee shirt summaries, the sound-bite statements of ‘absolute truth’, and actually apply their minds to a situation.  These people are fated to remain ignorant of the realities of life, to be uncritical of ‘what they know’ without ever questioning the validity of it, and unable to go beyond what they were born into.  They are not innately evil, but they are ignorant, and they choose to remain ignorant.  The evil ones are those who use that propensity not to want to know, to gain their personal objectives, to use those people for their own ends.

Jacob Zuma is a product of his background.  He grew up as a herd boy, watching the animals in a field, without ever having had the mental training or the accumulation of knowledge to be able to apply his mental capabilities in a rational way.  He saw the wealthy and powerful people of his environment as models of the life and lifestyle to aspire to.  The village chief in his community was a man who exercised unlimited power, using his hereditary position to influence the recommendations of the elders.  His wealth, although modest in absolute terms, was huge to the eyes of the simple herd boy, whose family could not afford the economic cost of allowing him to gain more than a rudimentary education.  He was influenced by the village thinking, which saw the White man as an oppressor and could not understand how that White man gained his comparative wealth through directed work and the application of learned skills.  To the young boy’s mind, the wealth displayed by the White man was enormous, and was to be gained by the use of power, as was that of the village chief.

The young boy, growing up in the back of beyond in Zululand became imbued by the Black ‘leadership’ belief that the best opportunity for him would be to aspire to the ideals of communism, which held that the assets of the community should be shared by the community, which is, after all, only a slight extension of the tribal system, in which the land is the property of the community.  When he was old enough to act on his own, but not yet old enough to have gained the wisdom, experience and thinking capability of a mature adult, the young Zuma joined the ‘liberation movement’.  Using his native cunning and, no doubt, the inherent ruthlessness of the young, Zuma rose in the ranks of the ‘freedom fighters, to become the head of Intelligence in the liberation army, a position which entitled him to enjoy the benefits of senior rank.  His indoctrination by the Soviet masters of his movement made him more capable in the skills of manoeuvring and manipulating, and his position gave him an ability to gain knowledge of the doings and desires of his peers that would stand him in good stead in the years to come. 

The ‘revolution’, a rewritten statement of the real history of the acceptance by the Apartheid (a word that, even now, Zuma mispronounces in a way that suggests he did not understand that the policy was one by which the separate racial groups in the country would be free to determine their own separate futures) government that the Soviet threat no longer existed after the ignominious collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989, gave Zuma the next opportunity to achieve his aspirations.  The adoption of the principles of communism by the Black movements had given rise to a fear in the minds of the Whites that their way of life, their very religion, would be destroyed by the accession to Government of a Black majority dominated by Soviet thinking.  The Soviets had no real interest in the form of government that would be adopted when their puppets came to power in the newly decolonised African countries.  Their sole interest was in dominating that country and depriving the West, specifically the United States, of any influence in those countries.  They were not benevolent benefactors of those countries, as is clearly seen in the oppression they imposed in their vassal States in Eastern Europe.  They were colonisers in a different form.  The ‘education’, particularly the ‘political education’ they provided to their ‘friends, the freedom fighters’, was necessarily indoctrination in the thinking of the Marxist-Stalinists who were in control, and that thinking has endured in those people and in those who have been influenced by them.  The lack of logic in that thinking, the absolute, unthinking conviction that what they were told is right, can be seen in the strict adherence to Soviet economic theory, regardless of the fact that experience has shown convincingly that it cannot succeed in the modern world.  There is no Communist State that can be deemed successful in economic terms, unless, as in the case of China, there is a liberal admixture of capitalism to the control elements that the Communists developed.  The fact that the collapse of the Soviets in 1989 convinced the Whites that there was no longer a risk and so created the possibility of a rapprochement to the Black movements has been ignored in the modern history of South Africa, with the story of a ‘glorious revolution’ being more palatable to the political leaders of today. In truth, Mkonto we Sizwe was an abject failure in military terms.  The transition from the Apartheid Government to the democracy we have was based on the realisation by the Whites that the policies were wrong and unjust, a realisation that built on a long-held belief expressed in the fact that the National Party was never able to gain the two-thirds majority necessary to change the Constitution, even though the leadership of the Opposition Party was markedly incompetent.  The Black governments throughout Africa have almost all adopted the Soviet thinking in their policies, and they have all experienced the lack of success that thinking was bound to bring.  Those that have been fortunate to gain leadership by capable leaders have adjusted those policies, some obviously, such as the new leadership of Tanzania, some surreptitiously, to avoid being seen to admit to a huge mistake that cost their people dearly.  South Africa was fortunate to have a leader in Nelson Mandela who was able to use his mind effectively, although he was constrained in this by those around him who were less fortunate in this regard, and he espoused Western thinking, modified by the need to correct the failings of the incompetent Apartheid governments which became more and more fanatical in their application of the lunatic theories developed by Hendrick Verwoerd.  When Mandela departed the scene of government, he was replaced by more devout and unthinking communists, and South Africa is now led by a man who applies his communist training and tribal thinking without the benefit of education, exposure to modern thought or criticism, one who has surrounded himself with others of the same persuasion, the same moral standards and the same indoctrination.  Zuma is reported not to read newspapers or books, both essential to the development of the capability to think in a structured way and with input from numerous other thinking people.  He runs on autopilot, a set of ideas derived from his tribal, herd boy and terrorist training, and applying the principles absorbed from his Soviet puppet-masters.  It can come as no surprise that he is obsessed with the building of wealth through manipulation and intrigue, the building of power by pay-off and blackmail, and that he has no conception of how a modern economy can provide an improving life for all citizens.  In Zuma’s book, the gain by one implies the loss by another.  The essential requirement, in his mind, of a decent life is the ownership of land, although it is clear that he has no idea of why that should be so.  The construction of a huge mansion by the theft (to call a spade a spade) from the ‘endless’ coffers of the State is a statement of his personal value, regardless of the fact that this symbol of ostentation is located in one of the poorest areas of his homeland, in which it was necessary to build a fire pool because the average citizen lacks an adequate supply of water sufficient to put out a fire, and the level of criminality is high enough to demand the construction of a Police Station dedicated to his protection.  The purchase of a fleet of aircraft dedicated to his personal (and family) use is essential to satisfy his pretensions to glory as the Head of State of a country which can pay for them (in a continent where the average Head of State has difficulty in affording a car equivalent to one of the fleet available to him), regardless of the fact that the economy of his country is performing so badly that its debt instruments hover barely above junk status, and its economic performance puts it firmly in the company of the worst-performing economies in the world.  He has a need to emulate, or even outperform, Robert Mugabe, who still spouts a line of racist hatred and economic garbage as bad as any terrorist organisation, and whose reign of terror and economic incompetence has brought his once-strong nation to its knees, with millions of its citizens either dead of starvation of economic refugees in other countries. He admires Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has also brought his country to destitution by the application of policies similar to those in which Zuma believes.  He has a desire to name the streets after the great leaders he so admires, such as Stalin, Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Samora Machel, Fidel Castro, Julius Nyerere, all of whom are textbook examples of abjectly poor governance, terrorism of their own people and rule by force.  He uses the tool of adulation of dead freedom fighters to inspire hatred of the Whites for their success when contrasted with his failures, without emulating any of good the qualities they may have had.

Taking his background and the self-imposed limitations on his own thinking, one cannot blame Jacob Zuma for the abjectly poor leadership and economic management that have been hallmarks of his terms of Presidency.  Knowing the man and his background, South Africa should have expected those results of him.  After all, one cannot expect a nation in one generation to produce two persons of the class and qualities of Nelson Mandela.  The transition from Mandela through Mbeki to Zuma clearly demonstrated a slide from the top end of the good-bad scale.  We can only hope that Zuma represents the stop mark at the bottom end of the scale, and that his successor will start the climb again.