Former president Jacob Zuma. (Getty Images)
Former president Jacob Zuma, whose views on the country’s race question have become stronger in recent years, on Monday said he was pained to see educated blacks thinking like whites.
In a clip posted by his daughter, Dudu Zuma-Sambudla, on Twitter, Zuma said he was extremely concerned about the fact that some educated blacks had allowed themselves to become the instruments of whites. “Absolutely problematic for me is to see Africans who are doctors and professors think like white people. That’s what bothers me. It’s one thing to think like a white but what really pains me the most is to be instruments of white people,” he said.
The clip was a snippet of a longer interview, which Dudu said would be released on Tuesday.
It is not the first time Zuma has expressed his disdain for white people.
In 2018 during his annual Christmas party in Nkandla, Zuma told children and the elderly that they should stop fearing and bowing to whites. “We fear whites to such an extent that they end up talking about us anyhow they wish,” he said.
Earlier that year Zuma told guests at a dinner hosted by the National Funeral Practitioners Association of SA, which backs him, that it was white business owners using black people who had removed him from power.
Zuma is scheduled to be back in the Pietermaritzburg high court next week on corruption charges.
Meanwhile, he has approached the Constitutional Court seeking leave to appeal a high court ruling that he defamed ANC veteran Derek Hanekom.
Zuma’s newly appointed attorney, Eric Mabuza, argues there are reasonable prospects of success.
Mabuza said the high court had failed to deal with the contention that the Twitter comment enjoyed the protection of section 16 of the Constitution, which protects freedom of expression. In 2019, Zuma tweeted that Hanekom was a well-known agent of the enemy, following revelations that Hanekom had met with the EFF to discuss a motion of no confidence in Zuma as president.
In September 2019, the KZN High Court ordered Zuma to apologise and interdicted him from publishing any statement in the future that said or implied Hanekom was an enemy agent or apartheid spy.
