The following is the edited version of a paper delivered by Jeremy Gordin at the recent Limmud conference in Johannesburg.

In December 2008 Jonathan Ball Publishers published my Zuma: A Biography. No doubt this is why I have been asked to answer the following question: "What is a nice Jewish boy doing writing about Zuma?"

I don't want to be excessively literal. I don't think the question is really about whether I am nice, a boy, or Jewish.

So what then is it about?

When in doubt, check out the Internet and especially Wikipedia. And Wikipedia tells me that "The Nice Jewish boy is a stereotype of Jewish masculinity which circulates within the American Jewish community (apparently also ours!), as well as in mainstream American culture which has been influenced by the Jewish minority."

I was somewhat taken aback by the "masculinity" bit - but all is explained in the next paragraph.

"The qualities ascribed to the nice Jewish boy are derived from the Ashkenazi ideal of delicateness (lit., ‘nobility' in Yiddish - or edelkeit). According to one Daniel Boyarin, in Unheroic Conduct (University of California Press, 1997), edelkeit embraces the studiousness, gentleness and sensitivity said to distinguish the Talmudic scholar and make him an attractive marriage partner." I would guess that the word in Hebrew, which I speak better than I do Yiddish, must be "adin" or "adinut" - "fineness".

Wikipedia continues - and I continue with it to give you a better feel for the definition - "The resistance that a Jewish male may launch against this emasculating image in his quest to become a regular guy occupies an almost mythical place in Jewish American literature." [This is where the "masculinity" stuff comes in. It's actually not masculine - it's "emasculatory" stuff. - Sometimes you have to watch Wikipedia.]

So: what do we make of the question:  "What is a nice Jewish boy doing writing about Zuma?" Have you worked out where I am going with this?

If I were Xolela Mangcu, or Ronald Suresh Roberts, or maybe even Steven Friedman, I would have to suggest that that question is in fact an implicitly racist question - or a question with racist connotations.

(I include Friedman in that list because, according to a recent article of his, Steven found that criticism of Peter de Villiers, the Springbok rugby coach, was tantamount to covert racism. The way I see it is that, even if De Villiers were a Jewish sage, he'd still be a bozo.)

Anyway, think about what I have just outlined.

Given the definition we have just heard, the question actually runs, when properly interpreted, as follows: "You are a nice Jewish boy - you are delicate, sensitive, and noble. You are adin. You should be studying the Talmud. But, since you are too stupid to do that, and are instead a so-called journalist, why are interviewing a rampaging savage, who wears leopard skins, sings Mashini wami, has more than one wife, and so on?

"Why don't you at least interview someone of some sensitivity and delicacy, someone with finer feelings - someone such as ... Ronnie Kasrils, the former minister for intelligence?"

You do see that my interpretation of the question is correct - don't you?

Let us therefore now, segue to November 2007.

I was at Nkandla, Zuma's home in deepest KZN, as it is called. It's an important visit for me: I have never been there before, I am writing a book about him, and Polokwane, the ANC's great jamboree, is just around the corner.

What I do not realise - and have never sufficiently learnt - is that the idea of finding Zuma alone - of believing that you can have a quiet, private chat with him - is just plain ridiculous. There are children, there are wives, there is a team of bodyguards, there are villagers (all of whom want something) - and there are, above all, hordes of people, such as I, who want something or other.

And among the people wanting something was another journalist - quite an eminent academic journalist from Chicago, whose full name I won't mention, but whose first name is Doug and who I believe is busy, as we speak, completing a book on Zuma and the ANC.

Zuma, however, is pretty damn grumpy - insofar as he is ever grumpy (because he is an eminently jovial man) - and you can't blame him. All he wants to do at Nkandla is kick back, as the Americans say, and fondle his wives, his children, and his beloved cattle - I'm not sure in what order - as you and I would like to do on an average Sunday - and yet he has to talk to all these people.

And I was watching his face, studying his demeanour and body language, at one point - and he was looking particularly annoyed, sitting on a plastic garden chair outside his main rondawel - and he did look at that point, I have to say, like a harsh despot - and I asked myself the following questions:

"What does this man think about me and Doug? I'm a nice Jewish boy, who's read lots of books and writes these genteel articles about him - genteel not gentile - in The Sunday Independent newspaper (which I'm sure Zuma doesn't read) - in other words, I'm a sort of quintessential nice liberal boy - the kind of fellow inclined to disappear up his own rectitude. And Doug no doubt has three tertiary degrees (like all good Americans) and is, I think, a professor of sorts. And there we were - running after this peasant.

"What" - I wondered to myself - "does he - the peasant - make of this? What does he make of these two representatives of - if I may say so - of gentility, liberality and intellectuality (of sorts), running after him? Is Zuma honoured? Is he touched? What is he?"

And the answer I came to then - and now - is that the questions I was asking - the overall issue - simply never occurred to Zuma. Not because he is not a thoughtful person. Not because he simply doesn't care - but because Zuma does not see himself relative to other people or cultures, and nor does he feels himself inferior or in any way ancillary. He might basically be a Zulu backwoodsman - but he doesn't see himself as an inferior creature. He hasn't been to university or read tons of books (though he's read more things, and more carefully, than you might imagine), but he doesn't see himself as inferior ...

This is the true meaning of what Tony Leon said when he said that Zuma was comfortable in his own skin. And it is more than a matter of his own skin. He is a Zulu - and he is very proud of being one and he considers his heritage as remarkable as you and I consider our heritage. As he sat there, he was a chief - a chief not by virtue of proclamation or by birth, but due to what he had done with his life. (And he has done a great deal with his life - do not forget this - far more than taking or not taking boodle from Schabir Shaik. That is but one part of the story.)

There was an enormous dignity, perhaps even majesty, about JZ sitting at his home in Nkandla, looking generally pissed off. And he did not feel beholden to us and what we represented - not in the slightest.

Let me now segue from that little picture of my experience at Nkandla to say the following - and this is with regard to edelkeit or adinut (fineness or delicacy).

Let me tell you something you maybe did not know - or, more probably, have not thought about. Jacob Zuma has the most exquisite manners. He did not learn them at finishing school, Michaelhouse school or Sandhurst military college.

At the risk of waxing over-poetic, I would say Zuma's manners are the inherent natural good manners of an African son (or "child", if the feminists prefer) of the soil - and of course his mother would have seen to it that he did not step over the line/ that he behaved properly.

Zuma makes you welcome in his home (even if he's not paying the rent). He is polite and deferential. Zuma listens to what you have to say. Ah, the art of listening: we are all so busy being empowered and emboldened and going to our life coaches that we have forgotten how to listen. A truly remarkable skill: listening to other people.

Zuma is also punctilious about ensuring that you - his guest - or his interlocutor - whatever you might be in relation to him - do not lose face. Let me give you a simple, personal, maybe too personal, yet telling, example.

Zuma: A Biography has sold, Jonathan Ball Publishers tells me, close to 20 000 copies. That's a lot for South Africa.  (Other books, Gevisser's Mbeki biography, Feinstein's book, After the Party, have sold more, but the Zuma sales are still high in a South African context.)

And there have quite a few reviews. Many of them, most of them, especially a few by local reviewers, have been mean or snide. This is fine; as the English novelist, Arnold Bennett, said: "I don't read the reviews of my work; I measure them".

Yet not one of the professional readers - not one of these very clever people who knew exactly how the book should have been written - and who had noticed how badly I had screwed up this or that, and misspelled this or that (Paul Trewhela made a huge song and dance on Politicsweb about my misspelling of "Nhlanhla") - not one of these readers who had noted that I had indeed messed up by not acknowledging properly my borrowings from a book called The Arms Deal In Your Pocket by Paul Holden - not one of those geniuses noticed that  I had mistakenly inverted the names of Zuma's father and mother.

Sure, the names of Zuma's parents are uncommon. And, in fact, working out the "gender" of the respective names is difficult, even for isiZulu speakers. Zuma's father's name was Gcinamazwi and his mother's was Nokubhekisisa. But I had inverted them. It was a bit like calling my father Sue and my mother Fred.

I don't know if the date 6 April of this year means anything to you but to Zuma it means a great deal. It was the day on which the acting NDPP Mokotedi Mpshe withdrew charges against him, thus finally opening the way for Zuma to become president.

That night, Zuma had a little party at his Forest Town home for 700 of his closest and most intimate friends - and I had a chance to talk him for the first time in months - and he told me that he had enjoyed the book very much - that it had a couple of mistakes, but these could be rectified, and overall he'd really enjoyed it.

Now, Zuma would have been fully within his rights to have said: "Now, listen, you honky bozo, what do you think you're doing? You moron - you have inverted the names of my parents, you have messed up the names of my parents - in the first book about me - and I am about to be the president of the country." 

He could have whispered in my ear: "Listen, my brother, you remember that ambassadorship to Kazakhstan? You can kiss it goodbye now, china."

And he could actually have embarrassed me publicly. "This umlungu Jeremy Gordin holds himself up as an authority on me and all who sail in me - but he can't get my parents' names right." And so on.

But he didn't. Zuma didn't embarrass me or say anything to me because he is intrinsically polite and courteous - because he wouldn't want me to "lose face".

And because he liked me as much as I liked him. He called me "the jolly fat guy" - and I called him ... "sir".

This does not mean that Zuma is a saint.

He's far from being one - but so are most of us (even the rabbis and priests). And it does not mean that, as one of the chiefs of the ANC's feared security arm, he did not take decisions to kill people. The level of penetration by enemy agents, but mainly by impimpis/informers, was disastrous, and in truth the ANC's war of liberation, qua war, was a mess. In other words, I daresay Zuma might have had to make decisions about killing certain people. I don't know if he did - but I daresay Zuma might have had to make decisions about killing certain people. This is what people do in those situations and that is what people such as Zuma sometimes have to do. Ask Ehud Barak. Or maybe you have already asked Lt-Col David Benjamin.

The point I have tried to make is that it is interesting how much racial baggage is carried by a question as simple as "What is a nice Jewish boy doing writing about Zuma?"

It attempts to set up the nice, civilized Jewish boy (with all the baggage that that carries) on the one hand - and The Other (with a capital O) - the savage - on the other.

It is just not fair to either side.

I have also been asked whether "Jews rely more on Jewish commentators than other commentators to make sense of political developments - due to a greater degree of trust flowing from belonging to the same group?"

Being as conscious of political correctness as the rest of you (maybe more conscious), I wish the answer to this question were no. But, as I said to an ex-fiancée of mine once, I am assuming that you want me to tell the truth, yes?

And the truth is that the commentator to whom I pay the most attention in the political arena is Jewish - and the cartoonist whom I think is the most acute is also Jewish. I do rely on Steven Friedman. I generally find him the most balanced and the least panic-stricken of the commentators, and I do find Zapiro mostly funny and apt.

This does not mean, however, that they have carte blanche in my world - that all judgment of them is suspended. When Zapiro starts getting over-righteousness and disappearing up his own rectitude - as he sometimes does - I turn the page and kick the dogs.

When Friedman starts saying silly things - as he is wont to do when the subject is Peter de Villiers or the "Middle East" - such as the moronic statement he made, saying that the Jewish board of deputies shouldn't fuss about Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fatima Hajaig, they should worry instead about the Palestinians in Gaza - well, then, I also turn the page and kick the dogs twice. You remember the Hajaig incident? She said at a rally in January that the control of the United States and most other Western countries was in the hands of "Jewish money power". 

I wish I were in the hands of Jewish money power.

I have to say - no offence to anyone - that I also dislike questions such as "What is Zuma's relationship to the Jewish community, locally and in Israel?" or, worse, "What are the implications for Jews arising from the Zuma presidency?"

You know why I dislike questions such as those, don't you?

It's the implicit - actually explicit - assumption that we - by which I mean we Jews - actually feature somewhere near the top of the priority list.

I mean: maybe Zuma doesn't have any relationship to the Jewish community.

That's not true of course. He knows full well that there is a Jewish community; he's actually addressed the Jewish community qua community; and he knows something about Jewish people. He rubbed shoulders with a number of them from Joe Slovo to Gill Marcus to that most delicate of souls, Ronnie Kasrils. And I can assure you that Zuma doesn't think Tony Leon, our new ambassador to Argentina, hails from Ireland.

Or consider the question, "What are the implications for Jews arising from the Zuma presidency?"

Just before the April general election, which brought Zuma to power, Mark Gevisser wrote an opinion piece in The Star and in some other Independent newspaper titles, in which he said that it was a hard, hard decision to make - Gevisser clearly being a sensitive and thoughtful soul - but he was not going to vote for the ANC.

He said he couldn't vote for the ANC because he was troubled by the ethical improprieties suggested by the charges that had been laid against Zuma by the National Prosecuting Authority and by the manner in which the acting director of the NPA, Mokotedi Mpshe, had dropped the charges.

Now let me say right away that I know Gevisser reasonably well and that I sincerely - and I state this very clearly because I am so seldom sincere - have a great deal of respect and affection for him. His biography of former president Mbeki is a monumental work, a major piece of biography by any standards and beautifully written and excellently researched.

But what possessed the fellow to believe that Jacob Zuma or Gwede Mantashe or any of the millions of people who voted for the ANC in the general election would give a damn about whether he, Gevisser, voted for the ANC?

Similarly, a week or so after Zuma's inauguration, there appeared on page one of The Star a story about Zapiro. In it Zapiro announced magnanimously that he was going to dismantle the famous shower head that he had been running on Zuma's head ever since Zuma's rape trial. Now, Zapiro is not responsible for which page a story about him appears. That's not his call.

Still, what made Zapiro think - or the editors of The Star think - that Zuma or Mantashe or the millions of people who voted for the ANC would give a damn about whether Zapiro left a shower head on or off Zuma's head?

I am straying here into another subject altogether - the strange "disconnect" that exists in this country between the so-called mainstream media and the majority of the electorate. This is a subject dear to my heart. But unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it's not my subject today.

Nor am I here to scold Gevisser or Zapiro. All I'm trying to say rather long-windedly is that I think we sometimes do need a bit of perspective - a perspective with a lot less (personal and group) ego - when discussing subjects such as, say, Zuma or the implications of a Zuma presidency.

And so the short answer to the question, ‘What is Zuma's relationship to the Jewish community, locally and in Israel?' is that the relationship is okay - actually it's pretty good insofar as it exists - but, hey, it's not Zuma's number one concern. It's not even his number 11 concern ...

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