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Get thee to an island, wench! Our time-capsule president

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Marianne Thamm has toiled as a journalist / writer / satirist / editor / columnist / author for over 30 years. She has published widely both locally and internationally. It was journalism that chose her and not the other way around. Marianne would have preferred plumbing or upholstering.

President Jacob Zuma’s comments that teenage mothers need to be separated from their babies and sent to an island to complete their schooling are out of step, not only with the modern world but his own government’s policy as well as the constitutional democracy he leads. By MARIANNE THAMM.

By now, we the people – the citizens of South Africa – are aware that many of our president’s private thoughts and ideas belong to another century or bygone age (well, perhaps several bygone eras).

There’s the part of him that is an old-style, paranoid Soviet Comrade Leader replete with an entourage of sycophantic toadies who protect and shield him and who suspect that the world is teeming with spies and enemies – including in one of the president’s very own matrimonial boudoirs.

Then there is the traditionalist and cultural nationalist, the head of a polygamous household of an ever-increasing dynastic family which spends a lot of time in a private, rural dacha in KwaZulu-Natal, renovated, (at citizen’s expense) to standards way above and beyond the Top Billing national middle-class average.

We have become accustomed to the president’s quaint views on many matters including homosexuals, weaves, keeping dogs as pets, women who aren’t really women until they are married and become mothers, as well as his understanding of what exactly a democracy might be.

We have, in fact, begun to enjoy and anticipate those moments when our great leader might opt to spontaneously divert from the dry collectively written speeches he usually delivers, only to predictably put both his feet firmly in his mouth. We have grown accustomed to the silence from fellow ANC politicians after the embarrassments.

This week the president again did not disappoint. Addressing a sitting of the National House of Traditional Leaders the president reportedly said that teenage mothers should be separated from their babies and sent to “faraway places” to study. It was a calculated statement he no doubt tailored to suit this particular constituency that he is currently wooing in the light of the ANC’s continued loss of support in urban areas.

In a rare moment of self-reflection the president said he knew his comments would be “controversial” but added his suggestion was just one quick fix to “small kids having children”. Luckily he didn’t expound on several other solutions he might have dreamed up in private.

Of course the solution to adult men having more children than they can afford to support and educate did not feature in his narrative. For this is one problem the president himself has managed to solve through asking a collection of friends (Shabir Shaik), business associates, benefactors and comrades, including former President Nelson Mandela, to take care of on his behalf.

“I’m sure people are going to protest as I am talking now because people don’t want to face reality. The fact of the matter is you have kids with kids and they don’t know how to raise a child or look after them. They become a burden to grandmothers and a burden to society. Why should we just sit as a nation?” the president reportedly asked (without a hint of irony).

He added that when he had first made these comments six years ago while on the campaign trail, he was “very determined but this is democracy”.

The president’s understanding of “democracy” he made perfectly clear to former DA Leader Lindiwe Mazibuko in 2012 when he informed her in Parliament “Sorry, we have more rights here because we are a majority. You have fewer rights because you are a minority. Absolutely, that’s how democracy works. So, it is a question of accepting the rules within democracy and you must operate in them.”

Reporting this week on the President’s address to traditional leaders the government’s official mouthpiece, the SABC, stated, “President Jacob Zuma says traditional leaders are failing to use their status to influence the crafting and adoption of policies that affect most of their subjects.”

Subjects.

The reporter could be forgiven for describing the citizens of a constitutional democracy as “subjects” as the president himself is also often apparently just as confused by what we are.

Later, after the media had reported on the president’s thoughts on how to deal with pregnant schoolgirls, his turbo-charged rinse and spin-doctor, Mac Maharaj, issued a statement berating the media for “misquoting” him.

“President Zuma did not single out girls for criticism,” the statement was headed.

“The Presidency has noted media reports on the remarks by President Jacob Zuma during the debate on his annual address to the National House of Traditional Leaders in Parliament yesterday, 10 March 2015.

“President Zuma was emphasising the need for teenagers to focus on their studies and said children should not be raising children. In his remarks he referred to both boys and girls. The statements by commentators that the president singled out girl children only for criticism with regards to teenage pregnancy is incorrect. The president also emphasised the correct use of child support grants, saying the money should be spent on the needs of children. The Presidency rejects any attempts to distort what the president said.”

Oh, all right then. Both boys and girls, ok.

But what about the biggest gaffe?

Not a word about the suggested violation of citizen’s rights that they be banished by some decree and against their will to “faraway places” or “islands”?

Not an issue? Well, we’ll just let that one slide, should we?

Now, the president is quite correct that the figures on teenage pregnancies are alarmingly high in South Africa. The factors that drive this are complex and varied and include, according to a myriad of studies, “gender inequalities, gendered expectations of how teenage boys and girls should behave, sexual taboos (for girls), sexual permissiveness (for boys), poverty, poor access to contraceptives and termination of pregnancies, inaccurate and inconsistent contraceptive use, judgmental attitudes of many health care workers, high levels of gender-based violence, and poor sex education.”

All of the above thrive in toxic and deeply patriarchal societies.

The irony is that Jacob Zuma leads a government that has formulated some of the most progressive policies with regard to gender equity as well as the sexual health of the country’s youth including the recently approved National Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Framework Strategy (NASRHRFS).

Research conducted during the formulation of the policy showed that the majority of teenage mothers were not aware of the law when it came to matters pertaining to age of consent or statutory rape. The strategy, for the first time, provides a clear political instruction to implement policy in a synchronised fashion across government ministries with the National Population Unit initially serving as its secretariat as well as involving the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).

The plan not only aims to reduce incidents of sexually-transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancies but also seeks to inculcate a value system that “does not ascribe to gender stereotyping or other prejudices”.

This is an extremely progressive view, in marked contrast to Jacob Zuma’s.

While President Zuma often pays lip service to the contemporary understanding of gender equity, it is clear that he personally harbours disturbingly antiquated patriarchal views on women (as well as many other issues including homosexuality and marriage) and that some of his proposed solutions clearly violate very basic human rights.

President Jacob Zuma, we all more or less agree (well, apart from the clapping, dancing praise-singers in the ANC who shield him in Parliament and in public) is a liability to the ruling party in more ways than one.

His personal life and thoughts have come to dominate the national debate when the party should, under normal circumstances, be praised for many groundbreaking policy frameworks and initiatives.

As long as this old patriarch who behaves like a 19th Century Paramount Chief remains the face of the party, we will never be unable to see the modern body politic. It is time for him to retire to his dacha at Nkandla and leave the rest of us to get on with the 21st century. DM

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