Zuma Quotes

“When being distracted by a sideshow, one should wonder what is happening in the big tent.”
― Deon Potgieter

“His handlers have built an enormous blockhouse for him, and he almost never strays from its air-locked confines. We only encounter him at the occasional press conference, where we are never allowed to ask follow-up questions, or in Parliament, where he trundles through the proceedings. Think about this for a second: a sophisticated, populous, middle-income nation with a large international profile has no fucking idea what the president thinks, if he thinks anything at all. How did we come to be led by a shadow?”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Zuma may have the appearance of a scuzzy ghost, but the war against his wretched, calamitous, inept and divisive rule is far from over. Those who thought that Zuma was down and out have underestimated him. Beware: his middle name is not for nothing Gedleyihlekisa. It means 'the one who laughs while grinding his enemies'.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Poor JZ is the perpetual victim. In the case of Nkandla, he was the victim of a 'supply-chain' fiasco; something he knew nothing about.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“To prevail and to enrich himself, Zuma has been prepared to defy the Constitution, risk the economy, jeopardise social grants, allow his cronies to plunder and capture the state, and look on while the law enforcement agencies implode.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“In his first five years, Zuma had ripped like a tornado through the state's institutions and wreaked havoc across the land. But the worst was yet to come. In his second term, which has two years left as I write this, the windstorm has been upgraded to tsunami status and Zuma is ravaging the Republic.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“The ongoing reports continue to demonstrate years of the most horrendous and systematic looting, stealing, corruption, money laundering and abuse of our state agencies and state-owned enterprises imaginable. Some losses run into billions of rand. Much of it is taxpayers' money – money that could and should have gone to fund needy tertiary students, build more schools and provide more services to disadvantaged communities; money that could have addressed issues that have been fuelling many of the civil protests in our country in recent years.”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison

“Why has no one, not the Hawks with their serious commercial crimes unit or the police's crime intelligence unit, ever investigated the shenanigans of this family? The State Security Agency (SSA) has a unit that specialises in organised crime. What have they been doing all these years? Why have the Guptas and their associates been allowed to amass their ill-gotten fortunes with such impunity for so long? Why, now that evidence of this is out in the open, are our law enforcement agencies still sitting on their backsides?”
― Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers: Those Keeping Zuma in Power and Out of Prison