01 Jun 2009
There’s an air of vindication when you speak to Jeremy Gordin, author of Jacob Zuma; A Biography. During his work as a reporter for The Sunday Independent, covering the Zuma trials and tribulations, he was regularly branded as a ‘Zuma apologist’. He went through hard times when ‘rape victim’ Khwezi told him blatant lies about her sexual encounter with Zuma in 2005. His book was slashed by various reviewers, while David Beresford blasted him in the Sunday Times for underplaying Zuma’s communist past.
Oh, and just when the book was about to be launched, there was a plagiarism issue, with accusations that Gordin had lifted chunks of Paul Holden’s book about the arms deal. “The irony is that fifty percent of the stuff that Paul was claiming copyright over was taken from articles that I wrote”, he says in a Parkview coffee shop.
The communist allegations also proved to be flimsy. “Zuma as a follower of the historical materialism or the dialectic is pushing it a bit,” says Gordin. “It’s just not his interest intellectually, it’s just not where he is. Zuma comes from trade unions and I’m sure they had the usual Marxist back and forth when he was with the ANC in exile. But when they realised this split was looming, he and Mbeki were out like flint in 1990. It’s all there in the book.”
He grins. In fact he grins a lot - vindication is a strong emotion. Suddenly everyone wants to talk to him about the new president. He went from ‘Zuma apologist’ to ‘Zuma expert’. And yes, he’s happy to admit that he’s quite fond of his subject. “I wrote the book partly because I thought he really was getting a shit deal, especially in 2006/2007. I liked him, and as far as I knew he was always reasonably straight with me.”
The book is largely based on the various encounters Gordin had with Zuma, the court cases and the Polokwane saga. Biography therefore is too big a word; the first fifty years of Zuma’s life cover only 60 pages. Gordin agrees that his work is “a bit thin” on Zuma’s younger days. Partly this had to do with deadlines and pressure, partly with Zuma himself. “You can talk to him, but he likes to tell a discursive story and you can be stuck on one hour for three weeks. He likes to tell a long story, sit under the tree, describe it in detail, that’s his modus operandi.”
It’s not a psychological portrait either, providing little insight in the mind of Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma. Yet there must be so much to tell and ask. Like, does he bear grudges after all he went through, from the persecution to the cutting cartoons? “He does feel bitter,” says Gordin. “But it’s kind of complicated. Personally, and that’s one of the nice things about him, he’s not bitter and not small minded. He’s not an intellectual, but in the old sense he’s broad minded. But, as I try to hint at the end, there is somewhere inside that landscape a sense of: don’t fuck me around because I’m a herd boy. And if you do, I won’t forget that. He did play a role in removing Mbeki. But I don’t think he has petty grudges. Revenge is not a big deal. He is ostensibly, remarkably un-fucked up in any kind of way. Tony Leon always says it and it’s true: he’s so comfortable in his own skin.”
Asked to sum up Zuma in one paragraph he thinks for a while. “Erhm, I would define him as charming, broad minded, tenacious, and a very, very shrewd politician. There’s this phrase people love using: he’s a player. That’s him, he’s a player within the ANC. He understands the ANC very well and he understands the people in it very well. And also he has this kind of tenacity of the herd boy who wants to know why he can’t have some of the butter as well.”
And on the downside? “He’s too laissez faire, he doesn’t understand that in politics you can’t have a discursive chat. People want you to have views, want you to be firm. There are dangerous people around him, dangerous to the health of the country. Who? People who are very keen on power for money reasons. It’s all about money and patronage. I can’t name them, that would be defamatory.”
But obviously he must have a steely side as well, otherwise he wouldn’t be where he is now. “Yes, but it’s very well hidden. But he is steely and he can be very dismissive. I’ve seen him do it a couple of times with lawyers. He can be quite hard assed.”
Zuma is a traditionalist, in Gordin’s words “South Africa’s first real African president”. This traditionalism goes hand in hand with a conservatism which has enraged the feminist and gay community, who remember his sexist remarks during the ‘rape trial’ and his scathing comments about gay men and same sex marriages.
Gordin shakes his head. “Nah. He’s not against women’s rights. I just don’t think he has thought it through.” He also dismisses the rape allegation. “I don’t think he raped her, but I also don’t think she was a willing participant. I think she was a passive participant. You and I might have said: this person doesn’t want do it with me, I think I might go to bed. But in terms of the law he didn’t [rape her]. Although I don’t think it was a jolly experience.”
And the gay issue? Gordin laughs. “He didn’t even know he was committing a sin [when he said that ‘a gay wouldn’t have stood in front of me, I would knock him out.’]. He got a terrible shock. He just didn’t get it. What was the fuss about? You’d always hit effeminate boys who would come to stick fights. I mean isn’t that what you do?”
What makes Zuma so successful and enigmatic is that he manages to inhabit various spaces simultaneously, and effortlessly flits back and forth between the different ones. He’s the traditionalist who spent his formative years in rural KwaZulu-Natal. He’s the angry young activist who was arrested and spent ten years on Robben Island. He’s the exile who worked with NAT, the feared intelligence branch of the ANC. He also knows the party and its trappings inside out. All this gave him a kind of holistic street education which made him savvy and resilient, tenacious and shrewd.
A related thing, which gets curiously overlooked in the book, is the impact of Umshini Wami. In that simple yet complex song it all came together: the struggle credentials, the traditional beat, the modern use as a ring tone and the imbedded desire for change, which appealed to the underclass and frightened or enraged the bourgeoisie. From a struggle song it evolved into victorious anthem, giving people something to hold to and to in dire times, a kind of We Shall Overcome.
Yet Gordin doesn’t see the song as relevant. “It irritated Terror Lekota, so Zuma definitely went on singing it. And he felt it was a struggle song, fuck you guys. The crowd love it. I don’t think it’s enormously insignificant. The acid test is: will he sing it when he’s inaugurated?”
1952 Born in Pretoria.
1971 Studies English and philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
1977 Reporter and sub-editor, Rand Daily Mail, Cape Times, Sunday Express
1981 Publishes With my tongue in my hand (poetry)
1984 General Manager & Managing Director of Exclusive Books group
1987 Publishes Hard On (poetry)
1987 Wins AA Mutual Life/Vita Poetry Award
1988 Moves to the United States and works as sales manager for various publishers and as a writer/editor for Northern California Jewish Bulletin
1993 Editor of The Executive Magazine and Playboy South Africa
1998 Publishes Pomegranates for my Son (poetry)
1998 Publishes A Long Night’s Damage: Working for the Apartheid State (with Eugene de Kock)
2000 News and Managing Editor Argus/Independent Newspapers
2006 Associate Editor The Sunday Independent
2008 Wins Mondi Shanduka SA Journalist of the Year Award
2008 Retrenched from The Sunday Independent
2008 Publishes Zuma; A Biography
Heroes/influences:
“Dennis Silk, now dead, an English/Israeli poet whom I knew well in Jerusalem when I was at university there; former local teacher and present anthologist, Robin Malan; Peter Wilhelm, the South African writer.
”The main authors/books - i.e. people I don't know personally - have been Isaac Babel, George Steiner, Joseph Brodsky, Kingsley Amis, Mordechai Richler, Saul Bellow, SJ Perelman, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh and American poet John Berryman (sadly, all dead).
“A number of local editors - I would not call them ‘heroes’, but they each had different powerful strengths from which I learnt a lot while working for them - also influenced me: news editor at the Cape Times when I was there, Wessel de Kock; Rex Gibson and Koosie Viviers at the Sunday Express; and Stephen Mulholland at the Financial Mail.”
Aspirations:
1. To be present - in the front row - at the executions of a number of local journalists,
especially of a few whom I shall not name but who are involved in producing and writing local books pages.
2. To write a novel as beautiful and interesting as James Joyce's Ulysses.
3. To be rich enough to spend a third of the year in Amsterdam, the second third in London, and the final third in San Francisco - doing absolutely nothing except drinking coffee, watching people, and irritating my family.
4. To live an orderly and disciplined life in terms of which X happens from 6am to 8am, Y from 8:01am to 10am, and so on. I have tried for 56 years to achieve this but have failed dismally.