‘We can’t think like Africans’: Jacob Zuma’s e-tolls blunder

President Jacob Zuma’s latest gaffe has managed to offend a brand new demographic – Malawians and African immigrants in South Africa – as well as his old adversaries, those opposed to urban tolls.

The President was speaking at the ANC’s Manifesto Forum at Wits University on Monday when he dismissed the mindset of those opposed to the tolls as fundamentally anti-progress and anti-business.

Implying that first-rate freeways paid for by their users were a necessity if Gauteng were to compete with the developing world’s foremost business regions, Zuma said the line that has ricocheted around South African Twitter ever since: “The roads are to be tolled to pay back the money we borrowed to build the freeways, to make the economy flow in Johannesburg, not so? The principle of user pay has to apply to complement the costs incurred by government. This is what all the economies in the world do. We can’t think like Africans in Africa generally. [Laughter] We are in Johannesburg. This is Johannesburg. It is not some national road in Malawi.” Long before the end of the actual event, the social media had dubbed this Zuma’s “I am not an African” speech, in reference to Thabo Mbeki’s seminal 1996 speech in parliament on the adoption of the new South African constitution.

It is a staple of South African political commentary to contrast the cerebral and aloof Mbeki with the folksy, genial Zuma, but on this occasion, even the most dyed-in-the-wool Zuma supporters must have wished for a little more panache for the man from Nkandla. The meaning of Zuma’s speech was clear to veteran journalist Max du Preez, who was in the audience. On Twitter, du Preez (@MaxduPreez) explained that the words were light-hearted: a simple way of saying that “we’re a more urbanised country with a sophisticated infrastructure & economy”.

For others, Zuma’s words were a prime example of South African exceptionalism, with a particularly unfortunate choice of victim – Malawi’s president, Joyce Banda, has become celebrated for her tough line on corruption and her no-frills, austere personal style. The Presidency yesterday released “a statement to clarify [a] statement”, as Eyewitness News editor-in-chief Katy Katopodis (@KatyKatopodis) put in on Twitter.

Presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj claimed that Zuma’s remarks had been taken out of context and blown out of all proportion, which raised eyebrows on the social media since a verbatim recording of Zuma’s words had been widely shared across the media and Internet.

The opposition’s leader in Gauteng, Mmusi Maimane, released a statement in which the DA called on Zuma to retract his remarks, especially in light of the fact that several African countries – which have long been sidelined by international investors in favour of regional superpower South Africa – had in recent years posted significantly faster annual growth figures than an ANC-run South Africa.

Many governments in African countries have adopted investor friendly policies that create jobs. They are not burdening citizens with double-taxation through an expensive e-tolling system. The President should rather take a leaf out of the books of other African economies that are actually growing faster than us. This is what President Zuma neglected to think about when he signed the e-toll bill into law” Maimane said.

Political researcher and cultural and gender issues expert Nomboniso Gasa (@nombonisagasa) concurred on Twitter. Gasa, a noted commentator on the President, dismissed Maharaj’s angle on the President’s words as spin. Referring to the argument that Zuma simply referred to Malawi after noting that South Africans in other cities like Pietermaritzburg and Rustenburg should not pay for Gauteng’s expensive new freeways, she said that Zuma has made his point eloquently with South African examples; reaching for Malawi, she said, was “unnecessary and indefensible”.

The gaffe is an unwelcome one for the president who gave the national conversation catchphrases like ‘clever blacks’, ‘white law’ (in reference to prisons) and the idea of marriage as ‘good training for young women’. At time of writing, #MacMaharaj, #Zuma, #BBM, #Africans and #Malawi were trending on South African twitter. The Malawian government had not responded to the comment at time of going to press, although several Malawian newspapers and news sites carried comment on the affair.

Read more about e-tolls: 

Road infrastructure of SA’s economic hub endangered as SANRAL goes broke

The Local: Toll you so

Tolls will increase SA’s cost of living: Investec