Richard Poplak isn’t one to mince his words, and if you weren’t familiar with his work then his widely circulated take on the Cabinet Reshuffle (HERE) should have done the trick.

Jacob Zuma is of course a sitting duck, but the last month has seen another Zuma enter the fray. That would be Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the president’s ex-wife, and she has caused quite a stir.

The former African Union chairperson, currently unemployed yet enjoying some serious political perks, can barely contain herself as the Zuma lackeys anoint her the Chosen One.

Yes, she looks nailed on to become the next leader of the ANC, and the Daily Maverick’s Poplak isn’t having it.

Attack:

Like most journos floating turd-like in the increasingly fetid South African press pool, I’ve spent way too much time with Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of late. Certain elements within the ANC have dispatched her on an endless roadshow, and she arrives in remote halls across the country to be greeted by the cries and ululations of her advance guard – the green-clad gogos of the Women’s League. She sits on a stage or at a podium with a vague smile on her face, clapping along to the Struggle songs, and then rises to rattle off a series of invocations aimed at white monopoly crapital and its attendant deprivations…

The fact that Dlamini-Zuma is the president’s ex-wife is not incidental – it is the most significant and disturbing aspect of her ascendency. (If the ANC was so desperate for a female presidential frontrunner, Baleka Mbete is the most logical terrible choice.) She shares four children and who-knows-how-many assets with the current president, and even the faintest whiff of a dynastic handover should create abject terror in the minds of South Africans…

First, there is the upsetting sight of watching a private citizen with no job, and no diplomatic status, enjoy the use of a presidential protection unit.

(The current justification for this is that she was in a hotel nearby the scene of a non-existent crime. They’re not even trying any more.)

Second, there’s the simultaneous flouting of the ANC’s internal rules regarding open campaigning – and I have never seen an ANC bigwig campaign more obviously this early – while consistently conflating what remains of the ANC with what remains of the South African state…

Look, the body blows just keep on coming so strap in…

Indeed, at no point in her recent and extended debutante’s ball has Dlamini-Zuma exhibited any understanding of how democratic governance works. The same certainly goes for economics. Her imperiousness was on full display during her tenure at the African Union, a chairpersonship that dealt a deathblow to South Africa’s reputation on the continent…

Three weeks ago, I would’ve bet my nuts on Zuma running for a third term. Now, I know he doesn’t need to…

She is quickly turning into the country’s principal purveyor of bullshit – Sean Spicer in a green, black and yellow doek. She doesn’t merely toe the party line, she moves it into a freshly curated reality. Kids at Model C schools are “taught to hate the ANC, and taught that the ANC is corrupt, the ANC is bad”. The banks gave their employees time off to march with SaveSA. Malusi Gigaba, who has sworn that there will be no policy deviations in his re-upped finance ministry, is our last best hope for a transformed economy.

Sean Spicer comparisons are never a good look, Nkosazana.

And if you’re wondering about Dlamini-Zuma’s ultimate allegiances, one of her very few public appearances last year may provide a hint: she returned from Addis to accept from ANN7 a South African of the Year award, beating out Bonang Matheba, then-Eskom CEO Brian Molefe (!), then-Bafana Bafana coach, Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba, humanitarian Imtiaz Sooliman, Miss World 2014 Rolene Strauss (I’m serious) and scientist Professor Salim Abdool Karim. When I questioned all of this in these pages, the Gupta troll army went into full froth-mode, with even Atul Himself jumping into the fray. It was an early lesson that Her Majesty has some avid supporters, covalent with those of her former husband…

That her primary praise singer is the almost supernaturally useless Bathabile Dlamini [above] should remind us of what we’re dealing with: a hack who will use the carcass of the ANC to advance and escalate the Zuma looting project. If Zuma must fall, then so too must Dlamini-Zuma. They’re the two-for-one package that South Africa never knew it purchased, and certainly can’t afford.

Zuma must fall, but if you were banking on the ANC having enough integrity to banish the name from their leadership positions it looks like you have another thing coming.

Hang onto those #ZumaMustFall signs from the recent marches, you may be needing them again come 2019.

[source:dailymaverick]