Zuma: no more Mr Nice Guy

State of the Nation showed a man sure of himself and his leadership, writes Caiphus Kgosana

Disastrous - that's the word to describe President Jacob Zuma's first State of the Nation address, just under two years ago.

It was a shell-shocked and incoherent man who took the podium in June 2009 after an ascendancy to the presidency that had survived two court trials, an axing and a plethora of scandals.

In the glare of the national and international spotlight, the new leader could hardly string a sentence together.

Last year's State of the Nation address, the first to be delivered in the evening, wasn't any better. An even more nervous Zuma, still recovering from being exposed as having fathered a child with Sonono Khoza, the daughter of soccer boss Irvin Khoza, delivered another whimper.

That speech opened him up to a severe mauling by opposition parties, who questioned whether he had the stomach for the job.

The ANC in parliament also did him few favours when it deployed junior MPs as part of the team replying to his debate. This, too, left Zuma vulnerable to the opposition.

Fast-forward to last week, and Zuma has undergone a very positive metamorphosis. His speech this time around - although still lacking in crucial details and delivered in his unique style of mixing tenses and skipping words - was a massive improvement. Zuma has grown in confidence and the old charm is creeping back into his demeanour.

Jobs were the main theme of his speech. Even though he simply rehashed existing government programmes, added a couple of billion rands and sold it as a new package, he soon had commentators, the opposition, the media and his alliance colleagues falling over each other to compliment him for thinking out of the box.

But so conventionally unremarkable was his speech that the parliamentary debate in reply was dominated by everything but the state of the nation address.

In fact, the debate will be remembered more for Minister of Higher Education and SACP boss Blade Nzimande's nasty reference to DA rising star Lindiwe Mazibuko's privileged background.

When Mazibuko complained about Nzimande's use of the word "darkie" to describe black people, Nzimande quickly retorted: "Kuyahlupha ukungakhuleli elokshin" (That's the problem with not having grown up in a township), to roars of laughter from the ANC side of the house.

IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who is famous for using such platforms to embark on personal tirades, didn't disappoint this year. He took his party's entire time allocation - depriving his MPs of a chance to speak - and went on a tired rant about the ANC plotting to overthrow him.

He chastised Zuma - not for failing to deliver on promises, but for allegedly trying to persuade him during a secret meeting to give up his IFP position. He accused the ANC of plotting his party's downfall through its former chairman, Zanele Magwaza-Msibi.

ANC MP Annalize van Wyk used her reply to remind the opposition about the ANC government's successes in fighting crime, even though Zuma had dedicated very few sentences to this subject in his speech.

The Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, had a go at the opposition for what she regarded as baseless criticism of the ANC government.

Someone who noticed that the State of the Nation address had glanced over the important subject of local government was DA's local government spokesman, James Lorimer. He noted, in his reply to the debate, that Zuma had given just five sentences to local government - and those, he said, were "designed to soothe, placate and obscure".

"Those five sentences indicate the presence of Q7 vision, that is, a view of the world from the tinted window of a 4x4 high-speed blue-light convoy. Pictures with no sound or maybe, to be accurate, sound with no pictures."

Lorimer's parliamentary leader, Athol Trollip, praised the jobs fund and tax breaks to manufacturers who create jobs. He dedicated an entire paragraph to complaining about the R100-million spent on the National Youth Development Agency Workshop.

Unlike his predecessor, Tony Leon, Trollip appears to be more guarded in his criticism of the ruling party and leaves much of the sting to his fellow MPs.

He and Zuma have never really had a memorable altercation.

COPE leader Mosiuoa Lekota, on the other hand, seems to know how to get onto the president's wrong side.

Lekota complained about the lack of detail in the speech and cautioned that money meant for jobs should not find itself in the pockets of tenderpreneurs.

That Zuma's confidence has grown in leaps and bounds was clear in his own reply to the debate.

First, he dedicated five minutes to responding to Buthelezi. Speaking off the cuff. He expressed extreme disappointment that the IFP boss had betrayed confidential engagements between the two leaders. He reminded him that the IFP had no one but itself to blame for its current woes.

Lekota, a former ANC rival, was quickly reminded that presidents do not outline details in their State of the Nation speeches. A visibly exasperated Zuma pointed out that, as a former cabinet minister, Lekota knows that detailed government programmes are left to ministers to articulate.

Zuma even found time to correct an embarrassing oversight when he finally acknowledged former President Thabo Mbeki for his sterling mediation role in Sudan.

However, two days of responses to what was supposed to be an agenda-setting speech articulating the government's plan and intentions for the year quickly degenerated into a mudslinging match in which government programmes and policies found very little space.

So low-key was the reply to the State of the Nation address that the Minister of Public Enterprises, Malusi Gigaba, found time to announce the new CEO of Transnet dead in the middle of the debate.

Information contained in cluster briefings on infrastructure and social issues found more space in the media than did the debate.

ANC parliamentary officials were not pleased that the debate, a highlight of their political calendar, was not receiving the attention they thought it deserved, being overshadowed by ministerial briefings and other announcements.

But with so little coming out of the debate, who would blame ministers for diverting the limelight onto themselves?

What the deliberations were able to show, perhaps, was not only how Zuma had managed to finally settle into the presidency but how opposition parties have, albeit reluctantly, accepted him as head of state.

His office has undergone a drastic management change since that disastrous inaugural State of the Nation. Out went the director-general, the spokesman, the head of communication and some key advisers. Those moves seem to have paid off.

The president's body language, his willingness to depart from prepared speech to drive home a point and his overflowing confidence speak of a man who is finally casting his demons aside.

Even when he stumbles on words, confuses tenses or puts very little meat in his biggest speech of the year, what is important is that Zuma appreciates that he is now in charge of the country and is starting to act the part.

Mbeki was known to use his reply to the State of the Nation address to deliver a sharp dressing down to opposition party leaders who questioned his government's programmes.

Zuma, it seems, is also taking a leaf out of Mbeki's book and shedding the Mr Nice Guy image.