Smashing Media Conspiracy against President Jacob Zuma
There is a perturbing trend which one has been observing for years when reading media reporting of President Jacob Zuma and this trend leads to one conclusion that the media cunningly distort the majority of his comments/speeches with the scheming intention of discrediting and making a mockery of his integrity.
It does not matter how good the point is that the South African and ANC President is raising but if the media choose to make a mockery of it so it will be at the detriment of those the point was aimed for. Given the frequency and the consistency of this cockeyed reporting one would not be blamed to conclude as I have that there is a strong media conspiracy against President Jacob Zuma.
The recent media distortion of the remarks that the president made at Impendle, KwaZulu Natal at the annual commemoration of the induction of Inkosi Sibongiseni Zuma where he described people who loved dogs more than people as "having a lack of humanity" was a last straw. This is an unnecessary distortion and mockery of the speech by the people's leader when he is trying to conjure the spirit of Ubuntu to his people.
All that the president said in his speech of that event is correct and factual but because that's not what the media want black people to know they will then do their utmost best to quote just a small section of his speech in a bad light. However, it all makes sense that you cannot caution the black majority about the dangers of espousing the cultures of white minority while using the white minority's media to disseminate the very message.
Clearly in the speech there is nowhere a president says it's bad to love dogs but his point is to say people should not love dogs more than human beings and he continues to make an example of people who would sit in front of their vans with dogs while black workers would sit at the back in spite of pouring rains or extremely bad weather. This is a phenomenon we see quite often on our South African freeways and unfortunately some of those who are culprits of this inhumane act might be the shareholders of the very media that has to report the president's speech.
This explains why there is nothing else which is reported on this very historic day "The annual commemoration of the induction of Inkosi" but all we hear about is this skewed reporting about the president and dogs. There is definitely nothing sinister about the president discharging his duties by awakening the sleeping dogs which might send panic to the media that now that we are awake we might start barking for what is due to us.
Zuma is not the first president to raise issues of culture when being interviewed by the media or when addressing the nation while former President Thabo Mbeki is "an African".
Our very first democratic President Nelson Mandela referred to culture in a number of instances, the one which comes to mind was when he refused to answer questions about the possibility of him getting married to Graca Machel after he had divorced with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
In one interview on SABC 1's Newsline he told Leslie Mashokwe, the interviewer that in African culture elders do not discuss their love affairs with young stars. Mashokwe accepted that and moved on with the interview because he knew what the stalwart told him was absolutely true. The media seemed to have understood and accepted that, even though I am tempted to believe that the white capital was still hoping for forgiveness from Mandela for all their apartheid atrocities.
In Long Walk to Freedom Mandela writes, "In African culture, the sons and daughters of one's aunts and uncles are considered brothers and sisters, not cousins. We do not make the same distinctions among relations practised by Whites. We have no half-brothers or half-sisters. My mother's sister is my mother; my uncle's son is my brother; my brother's child is my son, daughter".
Now this will help one question why the media mocked Zuma when at the launch of a road safety and crime awareness campaign at KwaMaphumulo in KwaZulu-Natal during December 2011, when he said "As Africans, long before the arrival of religion and gospel, we had our own ways of doing things," and he continued to say during those days in African culture there were no orphans and old-age homes as this is a phenomenon which we relate to white culture.
We know that a good conspiracy theory cannot be proven but these are pointers which highlight that indeed there is a media conspiracy to tarnish Zuma's good name. All said and done the fact is, this is Africa and our presidents, especially the ANC presidents will lead us the African way without considerations of what some careerist Africans who work for the white media, such as Mondli Makhanya of Sunday Times, say or think.
Just a few points to ponder upon before I am blamed for "defending" the president when trying to explain the president's point of view and our understanding of it as its intended recipients. When Mac Maharaj or The Presidency are subsequently providing further clarity on the president's speech because of the media mystification the media would label them as "defending" the president which raises a question as to who they are defending him against because no one was being attacked.
This makes you realize that the media is aware that they are already attacking so the president must defend. Back to points to ponder upon, I have lived in a township for years and my parents' homes are in the homesteads, I am yet to see a person who walks the dogs in those places yet this is a prevailing phenomenon in historically white suburbs.
However, the president does not say it's wrong for black individuals to adapt to some white cultures and walk their dogs as some mainly in historically white suburbs like the General Secretary of COSATU, Zwelinzima Vavi, has adapted.
The key message is don't adapt to bad cultures and don't put yourself under pressure to adapt. It's also an undeniable fact that in our African culture a dog can be treated as a low animal to an extent that when someone is mad at a selfish individual or any bad person one would call him/her "a dog" to express how worthless he/she is and this is a very common insult.
This is in contrast to the white culture where they even kiss a dog which blacks still regard as taboo. Vavi does not say if he is already kissing the dogs or he's yet to learn the kissing part. Surely Zuma having been a shepherd and a hunter himself he loves dogs but one thing for sure he never walked nor kissed them like the majority of Africans in the villages, homesteads and townships.
Given the above, any sober minded person would agree that walking dogs is something blacks are learning from the whites and loving dogs more than people is something blacks should never ever learn from the whites and the whites who are doing it should drop it like a bad habit that it is.
Now that the bamboozlement gushed out by the self-concerted white capital and media have been demystified, this becomes the perfect time for the nation to re-route back to that national discourse that the president raised of humanity and for blacks to be proud of their black culture. We cannot afford to lose this national agenda to media conspiracy as we did lose the one about improving the lives of the orphans and old citizens
For as long as president Zuma continues to talk like an ordinary black South African who appeals to the majority of this country not the white capital and a few affluent blacks the media will continue to attack and ambush him as they want one of their own who quotes from Shakespeare and other famous Western poets.
A Zuma who said in his Political Report of the 53rd ANC National Conference at Mangaung teachers should not wear takkies at school and later warned about tenders that even grannies in homesteads know about tenders, that is a very humble and very pragmatic leader who is very much reflective of someone close to the reality not quoting from poems that only exist in the author's mind, that Zuma is always declared a permanent enemy by the white capital.
The struggle continues,
Sizwe Cele is an ANC Branch Treasurer of Ward 47 and an ANC Zone Treasurer in Curnick Ndlovu Zone in KwaMashu, Durban but writing in his personal capacity.
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