Co m m e n t

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SOLD OUT,

Chris Roper SOLD OUT!

he story I really wanted to write about

Ttoday was carried by The Guardian on Sunday, titled “Spanish Bishop who Married Author of Satanic Erotica is

Stripped of Powers”. What a great headline! It’s simultaneously coldly factual and wildly sensationalist. That’s the kind of headline I dream of. It hints at a confluence of powers, both good and ungood, to quote Nick Cave’s song Th e

Mercy Seat, and at an evil alliance between the word of God and the expletives of Satan. Which brings us to the publishing event of the year: the launch of former president Jacob

Zu m a’s“au t o bio g r a p hy ”, Jacob Zuma Speaks:

The Words of a President. The title is already a bit of a giveaway. Ja co b

Zuma Writes was never going to fly. On the p u bl i s he r ’s website, the book’s authorship appears to be credited to Sipho Seepe, Kim

Heller, Dudu Myeniand Themba Mathe. There is no author listed on the book’s cover. It’s also written in the third person, not the more customary first person that you’d associate with an autobiography. Mind you, illeism, or referring to yourself in the third person, is very much associated with egocentric, would-be despots. It was a favourite trick of Donald Trump’s. My close textual analysis of the book will have to wait, as it’s sold out. I missed the first opportunity to buy a copy, as I thought the announcement was someone with a fake Twitter account making cruel fun of Mzwane le

Manyi, official spokesperson for the Jacob G

Zuma Foundation and its titular beneficiary. But it was in fact the former media titan and Gupta stooge himself. The tweet What it means: read:“Car Boot sales. Pre The book seems Book shop sales R300 per to be a way for unsigned copy and R1,000 Zuma to avoid for signed copy tomorrow accountability for 12/12/2021 @ 14h00. Deposit his role in state at Capitec Bank below. Bring ca p t u re proof of deposit, NO CASH. 1st come, 1st served. Dudu and I will be at Mcdonald in Sandton (Cr

Grayston & Rivonia) #JACOBZUMASPEAKS.” Do e s n ’t that look fake? A presidential autobiography launched from a McDonald’s parking lot? While it potentially underscores Zuma’s reputation as a man of the people, in another way it ’s as ridiculous as Tr u mp ’s famous Four

Seasons Total Landscaping conference, accidenThat’s Jacob Zuma’s autobiography, apparently —all 100 copies available —not the former president coming clean about his relationship with the Guptas

tally held in front of a landscaping business ne a r a sex shop and a crematorium.

I guess we should have expected this from a man who is chief strategist for a political party unabashedly called ATM. But, no, Manyi, the man who “b o u g ht ”2 4 -ho u r propaganda station ANN7 from the Guptas is apparently still living the brand. That brand being incompetence and cutting corners.

Yo u ’ll probably remember the launch of ANN7, described at the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture by launch editor, Rajesh Sundaram, as a train wreck.

“Anchors were not professional anchors, just models. Young interns fresh from university worked long hours without complaining. The technical staff were all from India and did not speak English,”Sundaram said.

He also described how Zuma functioned as “de facto editorin chief, holding meetings at his Pretoria residence in the runup to the launch of ANN7. So secret was Zu m a’s role that the Guptas forbade any of the team members from mentioning his name.”

Perhaps this is why they left Zuma’s name as author off his own “au t o bio g r a p hy ”—s o me vestiges of trying to hide accountability. Which would be tremendously fitting, as the book appears to be a way for Zuma to try just that: avoid accountability for his starring role in state capture.

By the way, I doubt you’d be surprised to learn that Manyi is part of the antivax clown army. “Did we know that AFTER after treatment of Covid-19 some people will have unexplained fatigue? What else don’t we know yet?? How can Mandatory Vax be ENFORCED yet there is no conclusive information about so many things? Informed consent is not possible. Mandatory Vax = Bullying.”

But back to his own brand of snake-oil sales. Unfortunately, if you paid your money and turned up at McDonald’s, you were probably out of luck. Arch-grifter Manyi tweeted:“This offer has now EXPIRED. But no stress. If u have Proof of Payment but due to limited stock you co u ld n ’t get yr book today at 14h00, the following will apply. 1. Your money back tomorrow. 2. Get the Book later. 3. You can also choose to be deemed to have donated. YOU WILL DECIDE.”

“Deemed to have donated”. There’s a lot of slippage in that sentence. And speaking of slippage, one of the celebrity purchasers, as featured on the twitter feed of Zu m a’s daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, popularly known as the Ivanka Trump-lite of SA, is public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane. The tweet featured a pic of her in startlingly red boots, with the caption, “Thank You Mama @AdvBMkhwebane. We Love You!”

When I saw the Jacob Zuma Foundation tweeting “SOLD —OUT. SOLD —OUT. SOLD — OU T ”, I thought, wow, he’s finally coming clean about his relationship with the Guptas. Alas, it was just about the first print run selling out. Which is not as impressive as you might think, if TimesLive’s report is accurate:“Manyi said Zuma would be very pleased to hear that the first 100 copies had sold ‘like hot cakes’.”

If you’re only printing 100 copiesand selling out of a car boot, we’re not really talking about a major literary event. And it’s unclear whether Zu m a’s book is really intended to be a piece of effective propaganda, or just another moneymaking scheme. Certainly, paying an extra R700 for a book just because it’s signed seems ex ce s s iv e .

It ’s as hard to feel sympathy for Zuma’s pecuniary plight as it is to feel sorry for the Spanish bishop who lost his job because he decided to get in bed with the devil, so to speak. Normally, we’d cheer him on, I presume, but not after you learn that he “is reported to have backed and participated in so-called conversion therapies for gay people”.

He ’s moved on from a position where he was supposed to be a servant of the people, to selling pig semen. Another fitting metaphor for Zu m a’s book, to go with the empty calories sold at McDonald’s.

The Nick Cave song referenced earlier is about a convicted murderer who refuses to admit he’s guilty until he is actually in the electric chair, “the mercy seat”, with no possibility of a medical parole. He sings, “And in a way I’m yearning / To be done with all this measuring of proof. A life for a life / And a truth for a truth / And anyway there was no proof / But I’m not afraid to tell a lie.”

Zuma, too, is not afraid to tell a lie. We can assume his book is yet another attempt to evade responsibility for his evisceration of SA’seco nomy and state. As the publishers hopefully write, entirely without irony: “Significantly Ja co b Zuma Speaks comes at a time when the lie of the ‘nine wasted years’for SA under the pres idency of Jacob Zuma is increasingly being u n m a s ke d .”

One can only hope, fruitlessly I’m sure, that Zuma eventually has the same epiphany as the protagonist in the Cave song. “And in a way I’m yearning / To be done with all this measuring of truth. An eye for an eye / And a truth for a truth / And anyway I told the truth. But I’m afraid I told a lie.” x

A presidential a u to b i o g ra p hy launched from a McDonald’s parking lot? It’s as ridiculous as Trump’s famous Four Seasons Total L a n d s ca p i n g co n fe re n ce