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SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT! T Chris Roper
he story I really wanted to write about today was carried by The Guardian on Sunday, titled “Spanish Bishop who Married Author of Satanic Erotica is Stripped of Powers”. What a great headline! It’s simultaneously coldly factual and wildly sensationalist. That’s the kind of headline I dream of. It hints at a confluence of powers, both good and ungood, to quote Nick Cave’s song The Mercy Seat, and at an evil alliance between the word of God and the expletives of Satan. Which brings us to the publishing event of the year: the launch of former president Jacob Zuma’s “autobiography”, Jacob Zuma Speaks: The Words of a President. The title is already a bit of a giveaway. Jacob Zuma Writes was never going to fly. On the publisher’s website, the book’s authorship appears to be credited to Sipho Seepe, Kim Heller, Dudu Myeni and Themba Mathe. There is no author listed on the book’s cover. It’s also written in the third person, not the more customary first person that you’d associate with an autobiography. Mind you, illeism, or referring to yourself in the third person, is very much associated with egocentric, would-be despots. It was a favourite trick of Donald Trump’s. My close textual analysis of the book will have to wait, as it’s sold out. I missed the first opportunity to buy a copy, as I thought the announcement was someone with a fake Twitter account making cruel fun of Mzwanele Manyi, official spokesperson for the Jacob G Zuma Foundation and its titular beneficiary. But it was in fact the former media titan and Gupta stooge himself. The tweet read: “Car Boot sales. Pre What it means: Book shop sales R300 per The book seems unsigned copy and R1,000 to be a way for for signed copy tomorrow Zuma to avoid 12/12/2021 @ 14h00. Deposit accountability for at Capitec Bank below. Bring his role in state proof of deposit, NO CASH. capture 1st come, 1st served. Dudu and I will be at Mcdonald in Sandton (Cr Grayston & Rivonia) #JACOBZUMASPEAKS.” Doesn’t that look fake? A presidential autobiography launched from a McDonald’s parking lot? While it potentially underscores Zuma’s reputation as a man of the people, in another way it’s as ridiculous as Trump’s famous Four Seasons Total Landscaping conference, acciden38
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December 16 - December 22, 2021
That’s Jacob Zuma’s autobiography, apparently — all 100 copies available — not the former president coming clean about his relationship with the Guptas
