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Books Column: A book to put a blister on a president’s brain

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Ben Williams is the publisher of The Johannesburg Review of Books.

Here's a modest proposal for book publishers, following revelations about Jacob Zuma’s obsession with Redi Tlhabi and her 2017 book, ‘Khwezi’.

When a book gets under a politician’s skin, funny things happen.

Former presidents, for example, having knitted a book into the warp and weft of the grand conspiracies against them, make wild accusations that leave half a nation breathless with disbelief. (Sadly, the other half is generally left breathless with ecstasy at revelations that will lead to the downfall, in their credulous worldview, of their beloved leader’s enemies.)

I’m referring to Jacob Zuma, of course. Under oath at the Zondo Commission on State Capture, he named author Redi Tlhabi as one of the main plotters working toward his downfall. She was, after all, according to Zuma, in the USA making a movie of her 2017 book, Khwezi, called “Raped by Power”.

This was news to Tlhabi, who laughed it off on Twitter – then requested to cross-examine Zuma on the subject. But his bizarre statement revealed how utterly her book has possessed him since the night of its launch.

I remember the night well. A thousand people gathered in one of the lower corridors of Hyde Park Corner mall. Eusebius McKaiser interviewed Tlhabi about her book, its subject and purpose – it’s about the life of Fezekile Kuzwayo, who had to go into exile after accusing Zuma of rape in 2005, and died just months before the book was published – and Tlhabi signed copies for hours afterwards. Khwezi shot to number one and stayed on the bestseller lists for the entire summer.

So many people buying the book, so many people talking about the woman who almost thwarted Zuma’s rise to power. He apparently thought Khwezi was about him – he clearly didn’t read it, but still, the book lived with him, night and day, like a ghost that had witnessed an evil deed from his past. It has never left him: it was by his side, there, in the Zondo witness box.

In the US, meanwhile – where Tlhabi has recently not been making movies – another book has gotten under another president’s skin. This book is The Mueller Report: On the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, which several enterprising publishers have brought out, after its initial publication by the US Justice Department.

You can buy it, now, in hardcover or paperback, as an e-book or an audiobook – and even listen to it as a podcast. There’s nothing stopping the publishers, after all: Robert Mueller’s document is a public one. It’s a ghost Trump has tried to exorcise many times on Twitter, but the book and its unsubtle insinuations – some say outright damnations, especially after Mueller’s recent testimony in Congress – will haunt him and his administration for all of history.

Presidents and books: eternal enemies, like lions and hyenas, a fact that leads me to a modest proposal for South African publishers. Take a page from your American counterparts and publish Zuma’s Zondo utterances as a book. There are only a handful of titles to properly torment the man, and adding one that he himself authored would give us all immense cheer. You’d probably sell a few copies, too.

Go ahead: put a fresh blister on our former president’s brain. Call it, simply, The Testimony of Jacob G. Zuma by Jacob G. Zuma, and let’s see if he can weave his own words into the conspiracy against him. ML

Ben Williams is the publisher of The Johannesburg Review of Books.

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