INDEPENDENT MEDIA President Jacob Zumas Nkandla homesteadThe festive period happens to be an extra-special time for the people of Nkandla and its surroundings, writes Jovial Rantao.
The festive period is a special time for most people. It is the time for giving and receiving. A special period of goodwill.
And it also happens to be an extra-special time for the people of Nkandla and its surroundings.
If you’re lucky enough to have been born here, lucky enough to call the president a neighbour or uMkhaya, you will be presidentially spoilt.
You will receive an invite to a special age-appropriate party, where you will not only rub shoulders with the president but with the majority of his cabinet, who descend on the now famous village and its controversial presidential villa, to celebrate.
Yes, Christmas in Nkandla has become a special occasion.
But what about the millions around the country who also call Jacob Zuma president?
Are they being discriminated against simply because of where they were born, or the different location of the place they call home?
Criticism is expected for a person holding President Jacob Zuma’s position. Some of it is undeserved and some it is deserved. His conduct during the festive period is one classic case of self-immolation by our leader.
Every year, without fail, the president ceases to act like the head of state or the father figure of the nation. Each year, he goes down to his village of Nkandla and holds Christmas parties for the elderly.
He also attends an annual chess bash for the local schoolchildren.
And he plays Santa and throws a party for the children of Nkandla and surroundings. And then there is the massive Indlamu competition.
There is certainly nothing wrong with presidential parties. Evidence provided by video footage and still photography shows that those attending thoroughly enjoy the festivities and the free food and gifts that they take home.
However, what is wrong is that the continued staging of these events in Nkandla, and focus on KwaZulu-Natal, attracts deserved criticism for President Zuma.
In behaving as if the people of Nkandla are the only ones deserving of annual acknowledgement, President Zuma is not behaving in a presidential manner.
Rather he is, at best, behaving like a tribal chief and, at worst, like a homeland leader.
Wonder why this glaring anomaly has not registered with him or those who draw big bucks for advising him? Do they really care?
Some of them, cabinet ministers and top ANC officials, were captured by the photographers from the Department of Communications smiling and dancing to the music played at the parties.
Great support for the president, but where is the great advice?
And if the advice doesn’t come, why can’t the big man himself, a father to 22 children, realise that he can never be seen to be treating all those he leads differently?
Surely, as president of the ANC, Zuma understands the sensitivities around tribal issues within the ANC and the broader South African society.
This understanding must mean that he should realise how wrong it is to act in a way that discriminates against other citizens of this country.
All it will take is for the president to take eight more days from his precious time to spend time with the elderly, the youth and children in South Africa’s eight other provinces.
He could also take steps to send a message that not only children from Nkandla and broader KZN can benefit from playing the game of chess.
And that not only children from these areas are deserving of his Santa Zuma generosity. All it will take, as a first step, is presidential wisdom that the activities of the Jacob Zuma RDP Education Trust do not have to be confined to KwaXamalala.
Perhaps we should record, as a mitigating factor, that some of the 6 000 who attended the parties came from Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape. However, that is not enough.
It is laudable that the trust has educated 24 000 students since its establishment in 1995. At the party, some of the graduates told their stories of how the bursaries changed their lives and those of their families. But the trust could have had a much bigger impact if its focus had been national. The president would do much more to send out a message that he knows and accepts that there are orphans in all nine provinces in South Africa.
That there is poverty in more areas than Nkandla and KZN. That South Africa is so much more than the village the president calls home.
A Ho! Ho! Santa Zuma’s advisers should have whispered in his ear.
* Jovial Rantao is editor of the Sunday Independent.
Sunday Independent
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