South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma showed his strength in the historic township of Soweto as he campaigned for votes ahead of the May 29 general election.
Zulu warriors marched through Orlando Stadium with their spears and shields, men in camouflage sang and danced to revolutionary songs, while some of South Africa’s famous singers – including rapper Big Zulu – provided entertainment for the near-capacity crowd at Saturday’s rally audience.
For Zuma’s supporters, a major coup was the presence of the man known as disco king, Papa Penny.
After announcing his resignation from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) last week, he has now joined the former president’s new party, uMkhonto weSizwe, which translates as Spear of the Nation.
‘Unite Africa. Unite South Africa,” he said in a brief address to the crowd, adding: “Phansi [Down with] tribalism.”
Zuma’s supporters saw Papa Penny’s presence – he is from the small Tsonga community – as important as it challenged the perception that the former president’s support comes only from his Zulu ethnic group, the largest in South Africa.
But the star attraction at the meeting was none other than the 82-year-old former president.
The crowd erupted into chants of “Zuma, Zuma” as he walked into the stadium, while his increasingly influential daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, knelt before him and hugged him before taking his place on stage.
She is part of what is called the party’s “national core” and recently told The Shady PHodcast: “My dad is obviously the head, and I’m the neck.”
Mr Zuma’s decision to hold his largest campaign rally in Soweto was significant because it is an ANC stronghold in South Africa’s economic heartland, Gauteng.
Soweto also has deep political symbolism, as it played a leading role in the fight against the racist apartheid system, which ended when the ANC came to power in 1994.
But now, thirty years later, the ANC is in danger of losing its outright majority as it faces a threat from Zuma’s breakaway party and other opposition parties.
With this in mind, ANC leader and President Cyril Ramaphosa has been working hard on the campaign in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Addressing voters on Saturday in the town of Mandeni, about 100km from the coastal city of Durban, Mr Ramaphosa said creating jobs was his priority, calling out “small parties” such as MK – the acronym under which Mr Zuma’s party is known – warned that they looked down on the ANC at their peril.
“These small parties, the MK-what-what, don’t really know us. They only know us through the media. They will know us on May 29,” he said on the News24 website.
Mr Ramaphosa ousted Mr Zuma as president in 2018 after a brutal power struggle, culminating in the former president ditching the ANC last December and making another bid for power under the MK banner.
South Africa’s highest court has yet to decide whether Mr Zuma can serve as an MP in the next parliament. The electoral commission says the constitution prohibits anyone sentenced to more than 12 months in prison from doing so.
Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in 2021 after being convicted of contempt of court for ignoring an order to appear before a corruption investigation during his presidency.
But his lawyers say he has a right to become an MP as his sentence was reduced to three months after Mr Ramaphosa released him from prison in what is widely seen as an attempt to calm the former president’s angry supporters .
Senior MK official Visvin Reddy told the BBC he expected the court to deliver its ruling next week. Even if it went against their leader, Knesset would still participate in the election while Mr Zuma’s face would remain on the ballot paper, he said.
“We will go to Parliament, change the Constitution and bring it in,” Reddy added.
MK has set itself the target of achieving a two-thirds majority in the elections, although this seems too ambitious a target. An Ipsos poll published last month put support for the party at just 8%.
And to Mr Zuma’s concern, much of the crowd left before he finished his lengthy speech reflecting on political history.
While the Ipsos poll put support for the ANC at 40% (up from the 57% it received in the 2019 election), the Social Research Foundation (SRF), which monitors the polls daily, says the ruling party has seen a sharp increase has seen in support of ramping up his campaign in recent weeks, reports local newspaper City Press.
SRF head Frans Cronje said that if elections were held now, there was a good chance the ANC would reach the 50% mark.
“According to our computer projection of the past four weeks, the ANC has squeezed the life out of the opposition parties,” he says.
During his campaign in KwaZulu-Natal, Mr Ramaphosa urged his party’s supporters to turn out in large numbers to vote.
“If we win in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, we will have won because those provinces have the most people,” he said at the meeting.
Unsurprisingly, there was deep hostility towards the ANC leader at Zuma’s rally, with the crowd chanting ‘Down with Ramaphosa’.
“Power must return to the people,” Zuma said in a Zulu-language speech.
Addressing the white colonialists, he added: “People who came in ships and boats took over our country. They left us poor. We must take back the land our ancestors fought for.”
Some of his supporters wore T-shirts with images of Zuma and Russian President Vladimir Putin, signaling that the two were among the founders of the Brics – an alliance of major developing countries that aims to rival the power of Western countries.
“Putin is our friend, a friend of Zuma,” Knesset supporter Dennis Zwide told the BBC, accusing the West of exploiting Africa’s mineral resources.
“Africa is a rich continent, but its people suffer from exploitation,” he added.
In its manifesto, MK has pledged to nationalize South Africa’s mines and banks if it takes power, despite the policy being widely discredited after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“We want our children to study for free, especially those from poor households, because the poverty we have was not created by us. It was created by colonists who took everything, including our land. We will take back all those things, make money and educate our children,” Zuma said.
He also vowed to deport undocumented migrants, in a sign of the populist stance he has adopted in an effort to win votes.
The extent to which he succeeds in this will become clear in ten days’ time when South Africans vote in one of the most crucial elections in the post-apartheid era.
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