A number of theories are being touted in South Africa about why and how former president Jacob Zuma retains his appeal as a leader. And why the party he formed – uMkhonto we Sizwe – to contest the recent elections managed to get 14.58% of the vote in the national elections and 45.35% in the provincial elections in KwaZulu-Natal to become the largest party in that province. This just over five months after its launch.
But all the conjecture and explanations need to be treated with extreme caution: this is because nobody knows. Based on my five decades immersed in South African politics as a sociologist, I would argue that there is no easy explanation for the uMkhonto we Sizwe Party’s unexpected success or Zuma’s enduring popular appeal.
There was similar dissonance 14 years ago when Zuma defeated the then African National Congress (ANC) president, Thabo Mbeki, at a watershed party conference in December 2007. I analysed what one senior leader called the “Zuma tsunami” and how the event was being interpreted by the media, academics and thinking politicians themselves. I identified eight often contradictory and sometimes overlapping explanations of the phenomenon.
