Hama Tuma, Ethiopian author, poet and journalist, has been active in the political and human rights struggle in Ethiopia and Africa since the sixties. His satirical essays under the general title of African Absurdities have gained support from many quarters. Some of his books (English and Amharic) have been translated to French, Italian and Hebrew.
From Zenawi to Zuma, the follies of Africa are ably translated by the great continent’s presidents and prime ministers; those power mongers hellbent on staining the face of our beloved continent. Some are funny, most are not. But they all add up to the burlesque of governance that is still symptomatic of some parts of Africa. Personally, I prefer Jacob Zuma to Meles Zenawi, the mischievous wannabe democratic politician with an unusual penchant for ethnic politics to the detriment of some 80 million Ethiopians. But does my preference count at the end of the day?
Jacob Zuma could have been a character from an ancient Zulu folklore. In fact, it is quite obvious that many South Africans consider him harmless, and benign only when compared to his predecessor Mbeki-HIV-doesn’t-cause-AIDS. Often depicted as a caricature that serves to warm the prejudiced hearts of many, apartheid and anti-apartheid sympathizers alike, black shanty town dwellers couldn’t be more grateful to Zuma for the golden opportunity given them to vent their stressed xenophobic spleens on poor refugees from Ethiopia, Nigeria, and most of all Zimbabwe. The same Africans who fervently stood by their side in their fight against apartheid.
Staving off accusations for irresponsible behaviour after “raping” an HIV positive woman, Zuma argued that a shower he had taken after engaging in unprotected sex was meant to reduce the possibility of getting infected with the Aids virus! Talk about an Mbeki effect. And as if that wasn’t enough to kill any ordinary person’s political career, the scandal prone Zuma survived accusations of corruption, when power struggle at ANC (African National Congress) was at its height, to become South Africa’s president.
