Continuing the letter-writing exercise, ‘Cyril Ramaphosa’ responds to Jacob Zuma

MR former president, Dr the Reverend Jacob “Gedleyihlekisa” Zuma of the Wenzenists International Church of Saints. The head of iNkandla’s most expensive, and world famous household, KwaDakwadunuse (be drunk and show your bum). Msholozi! The landlord of the Zumaville Corruption Centre, Oops! I meant shopping centre. Mhlanganyelwa! Affectionately known as uBaba, not for nothing, you answer to the call “Baba” 23 times a day. And six times to the call “husband”, maybe more. The founder of Zuma & Partners Auctioneers, a leading offshore company, domiciled in Dubai, with a now-expired nine-year exclusive right to auction SA’s riches to the lowest bidder, the Guptas. Singer-songwriter of the hit songs Mshini Wami and Inde Lendlela Esiyihambayo.

Msholozi, I received your letter dated August 28. I now respond, because “I can’t keep quiet when someone pretends to love me with a deceitful smile”, sorry, that sounds like the meaning of your name, Gedleyihlekisa. Never mind. I imagine that these must be trying times for you as you juggle the heavy load of being the father of the nation, as well as being Accused Number 1 in the protracted case of alleged corruption, fraud and money-laundering.

As I understand it, you’re also a respondent in a Maintenance Court matter involving a lack of child support. You also stand accused of playing manga manga business with the Zondo Commission. It must be tough to go in and out of the courts when you know that you have done nothing wrong. A man of your stature must be allowed to enjoy his pension in peace minus the repayments for undue benefits relating to the iNkandla compound’s upgrades. Even that onerous repayment is a mirage created to tarnish your good name. This grand narrative of “a corrupt and unfit to lead Zuma” has been perpetuated since the 1990s by “three foreign intelligence agencies”.

As a former head of state, you should be “Secure in Comfort”, not hounded by those “seeking to destroy the ANC and build from its ashes a counter-revolutionary party under the guise of fighting corruption”.

In your letter, you state your preference for verbal sparring as opposed to letter writing. I apologise up front that I impose an additional burden on you by sending you this brief letter. I prefer a paper trail to verbal gymnastics. Your aversion to letters makes no sense considering that you have a doctorate in humane letters proffered to you by the Texas Southern University in Houston (U.S.) as well as another one in literature offered by the University of Fort Hare. The irony, of course, is that immediately after you led the Polokwane pirates into power, you dropped the ANC president’s open letter to ANC members published every Friday in the newsletter ANC Today. Nonetheless, history shows that Thabo Mbeki wrote you several open letters since October 31, 2008.

Throughout your reign of error, the proverbial “nine wasted years”, you avoided leaving behind a paper trail, I mean responding to his letters. Thus, the charge that my letter writing was an “unusual act by the leader of our movement”, should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves. I expected, as I still do, that your casual relationship with the truth would have received an upgrade in line with your advanced age. After all, you are an undisputed anti-West crusader, RET champion and rebel against three foreign intelligence agencies hell-bent on short-circuiting your political Waterloo.

You shamelessly state that by my writing the letter as mentioned earlier, I write for my own desire for white validation and approval. Apparently this is the worst betrayal of our forebears. I hope I am wrong and that I misunderstood you, but how did we get here? I wrote a letter to ANC members expressing my concern about the increasing levels of moral depravity committed by ANC leaders such as yourself, Jiki-Jiki, and you accuse me of seeking white validation? Njani! It is complete balderdash to aver that there’s a grand narrative against you and that some among us are “involved in attempts to destroy the ANC and hand it over to be a tool of White Monopoly Capital interests”. It is either you’re tone deaf or ignorant, if not both, to suggest that attempts to rein in corrupt elements within our ranks are nothing but a subterfuge to please imaginary whites. I conclude that you either have a Christ complex, if not worse, or are suffering from a sense of intellectual fraudulence, hence your self-reported loathing of the letter-writing discourse.

With best wishes,

ANC President

Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa

“Send me.”

This Letter from Mahlamba Ndlopfu is written by Bhekisisa Mncube, a former Zulu ambassador based in Pretoria. He is a self-appointed man of letters writing on behalf of the president. He is an author and former senior Witness political journalist.

This opinion piece was first published in the Witness.