South African President Jacob Zuma in New York September 25, 2013. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)
“We can’t think like Africans in Africa generally . . . This is Johannesburg. It is not some national road in Malawi.” Those are the words that set off a firestorm for South Africa this week after gaffe-prone President Jacob Zuma made his latest public slip-up. This time, the blunder came with diplomatic consequences. After Malawi summoned South Africa’s top diplomat over the remarks, the government was forced to backtrack on their initial denials that Zuma’s comments were taken out of context, issuing a formal apology on Thursday.
What began as a robust defense of a controversial new toll road around Johannesburg turned into a nightmare for Zuma’s ruling African National Congress party when the president inadvertently stumbled on a point of sensitivity across the continent: South Africa’s perceived superiority complex within Africa. The loaded subject explains why Zuma’s gaffe hit such a nerve, with outrage spreading far beyond his usual domestic detractors. That the ANC had to come out and offer assurances that “both [the ANC] and the president hold the people of Malawi and elsewhere on the continent in high regard” is testament to the seriousness of the situation. It also shows their interest in countering the perception that its leaders see themselves as above and somehow separate from the rest of Africa.
And it is a perception that has grown sharper with time as incidents such as last February’s brutal beating of a Mozambican migrant worker by South African police have put the spotlight on anti-immigrant sentiment within the country. Soaring police brutality towards migrants, even in the wake of this high-profile incident, has not done much to counter the impression. Adding to the outrage over Zuma’s gaffe is the fact that hundreds of thousands of Malawian migrants currently work in South Africa, inconveniently highlighting the class stratification issue, another sore point for the ANC.
Yes, the diplomatic fracas is already blowing over but not only will the furor around this incident further taint an already unpopular domestic measure, the growing resentment directed towards the ANC will also threaten to tarnish their standing on the continent (normally a bragging point for the party which has guided post-apartheid South Africa into leadership positions in both regional blocs and international bodies.) Given the ANC’s own history and the importance it places in carrying on the legacy of African heroes like Nelson Mandela, even a throwaway remark about roads in Malawi can go a long way towards confirming long-held suspicions and, by extension, diminishing one of the party’s more enduring points of pride.
