Johannesburg - President Jacob Zuma was greeted by a mixture of deafening boos and loud cheers as he walked out of the House of Traditional Leaders in Pretoria after meeting with traditional leaders.
As he walked down the stairs surrounded by bodyguards on Thursday afternoon, Zuma started waving at the cheering and clapping crowd taking pictures and making recordings with their cellphones.
However, the cheers were suddenly drowned by the boos.
Zuma ignored the disapproval and faced those cheering him, waving at them before getting into his waiting car.
Zuma’s booing comes a few days after Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa was also booed off stage at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival while trying to address revellers.
This followed the Constitutional Court ruling that found Zuma had violated the constitution and his oath of office, with many South Africans calling for the ANC to take action and for Zuma to step down as president.
In Thursday’s incident, Zuma had met traditional leaders to discuss some of the issues affecting service delivery.
The meeting was also to debate and discuss issues that the president had tasked the leaders with when he met them last month.
Taking a thinly veiled jab at the courts and their system of resolving disputes, Zuma said he would be “very happy that we solve the African problem in the African way, because if we solve them only legally, they become too complicated”.
“The law looks at one side only; they do not look at any other thing. They deal with cold facts and I was complaining about that (but) they are dealing with warm bodies, that is the contradiction. I must not talk too much because I might get blamed for something I do not know. I only speak the truth,” he said.
It was not the first time Zuma made reference to the courts and how the African ways of solving things was better.
In November 2012, he was again addressing traditional leaders during the opening of the National House of Traditional Leaders in Parliament when Sapa quoted him as saying: “Let us solve African problems the African way, not the white man’s way. Let us not be influenced by other cultures and try to think the lawyers are going to help us.
“We have never changed facts. They tell you they are going to change facts. They will never tell you that these cold facts have warm bodies.”
Among some of the issues discussed at Thursday’s meeting were problems around land distribution, legislation and policy, as well as problems faced by the spouses and widows of chiefs and other traditional leaders.
The president asked the chiefs if it was possible to solve the problems facing the country amid existing issues such as land disparities, pointing out they were the right people with whom to discuss this issue.
“Nation-building is a major aspect of the future. It is the responsibility of us all, but perhaps more so of traditional leaders,” Zuma said.
He also reminded them that it was colonialism, apartheid and the resultant divisions that had laid the ground for such problems, and that there was a need for harmonisation of financial affairs.
He said those issues required sober minds to debate and solve them as opposed to going the threatening and violent route and that there was also no need to turn to the courts to solve a situation, whose foundation was in the traditional setting.
“We need to find out what made us the way we have become; to find out why we were once so respectful, why there was no crime and why there are now so many criminals. What can we do to restore our dignity as a nation?”
Speaking to The Star on Friday morning, constitutional law expert Professor Pierre de Vos said he did not agree with Zuma regarding the cold facts and warm bodies analogy, because there was no way one could make a distinction.
He said Zuma was setting up two things in opposition to each other, when the reality was that cold facts directly affect warm bodies.
For example, a cold fact would be that someone took a knife and plunged it into someone’s back and the law was there to then protect that warm body, he explained.
“The law deals with real people and tries to protect individuals from the actions of others. I would say that the law deals with bodies in a way that protects individuals from the bad actions of others.The dangers of having no law is that people won't be protected,” De Vos pointed out.
The Star