Channel 4 News international editor Lindsey Hilsum analyses comments made by South African president Jacob Zuma shortly before his visit to Britain.
Will someone tell politicians that it is no longer possible to address contradictory messages to different audiences hope no one will compare the two? In the internet age there is just one audience and it is global.
Arriving here for a state visit, President Jacob Zuma told a gathering of British journalists in London that relations between the two countries were marvellous, histories were entwined and business prospects limitless. But this morning this quote from him appeared in the Johannesburg Star:
“When the British came to our country, they said everything we were doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way… I don’t know why they are continuing thinking that their culture is more superior than others… The British have done that before, as they colonised us, and they continue to do this, and it’s an unfortunate thing.”
He was provoked, it seems, by an opinion piece in the Daily Mail calling him a “sex obsessed bigot” and “a buffoon”. I can see why he might think that columnist racist, but not why such views should be ascribed to all Brits.
Or maybe that is not the point. It was a message for South Africans, not for the British. In the rainbow nation, it is not done to bring up the issue of race, so it is hard for President Zuma to accuse white liberals who are embarrassed by his polygamy and promiscuity of being racist.
Invoking the spectre of old colonalists is a way of saying that anyone who criticises him at home is either an old colonialist (if white) or a lackey of old colonialists (if black).
So that is how President Zuma managed to contradict himself and insult his hosts just as he was coming to stay at Buckingham Palace.