Against the Daily Mail, I’ll even defend Zuma

I don’t usually feel very much like defending Jacob Zuma. But after the Daily Mail‘s despicable reporting of his state visit  to Britain, I almost feel like I want to take a train down to London just to give Msholozi an extra scarf or something. Because it’s cold over here.  I suppose one shouldn’t take the Daily Mail seriously – after all, it was their columinst Jan Moir whose homophobic article led to a Twitter campaign leading to a record number of complaints sent to the UK’s Press Complaints Commission. (Not that it impressed them, as expected they dismissed the complaint, confirming that they’re a toothless club of press insiders).

But really. The Mail’s barely disguised racism is just too much too stomache. It carries unfortunate resonances with a long history of colonial discourse in which Africa is portrayed as a dark and exotic continent, and the labeling of JZ as a ‘buffoon’ is so close to ‘baboon’ it’s not even funny. Africa’s media image has for a long time been and continues to be that of a place of conflict, famine, disaster, tyranny, ‘big men’ politicians  – stories about Africa mostly enter Western newsframes when it’s bad news.

And when positive reporting is done about Africa, it’s often just as stereotypical and one-dimensional. The continent and its people are again often portrayed in simplistic terms, as happy, naive, childlike.  (Look at this Pepsi ad for the World Cup if you don’t believe me – oh, those vast, uninhabited plains; oh, those clever and cunning little African kids) Very little attention is paid to the ordinary lives of people, the way people struggle against adversity and also try by whatever means they can to hold their leaders to account.

The Daily Mail’s coverage of Zuma – and that of the British mainstream press more generally who have also paid disproportionate and isolated attention to Zuma’s private life without engaging in a sincere debate about polygamy, the human rights issues involved, or how Zuma has fared as a president – can be read against that background – a ‘big man’ from Africa, presiding over conflict, crime, poverty, not a politician (and a cunning one at that, who knows how to play the ethnic card), but as a naive, childish and a ‘buffoon’. Little is said about the way his presidency is also highly controversial in South Africa and his private life, his polygamy and his irresponsible sexual behaviour is also a topic for robust debate by the public and civil society. Zuma’s conduct may be indefensible, but our democracy is not. Back home his people and his party have been castigating him, but because they know how important he is as a leader and a role model – not because he is a simple African buffoon. And, by the way, if gender rights are so important to you, ms Rebecca English, why refer to Zuma’s wife as a ‘former bank clerk’ ‘whose generously proportioned figure strained at the seams of her gold shot- silk suit’? Sentences like those reminds one that Sarah Baartman too was once a visitor to Europe.

But the biggest problem with this type of journalism is not that it stereotypes, simplifies or insults. It is that it will lead to the type of rebuttal by Zuma which will just further strengthen his hand to play the essentialist, ‘tradition’ card at home. And once he plays the ‘culture’ card in that way, critical debate about his presidency and his practices becomes very hard to sustain without in turn leading to accusations of racism and Eurocentrism.