Zuma giving cash to voters out of his own pocket

He may not be keen to pay back some of the public money used to build his homestead in Nkandla, but President Jacob Zuma has no difficulty dishing out cash to would-be voters.

Since officially starting the ANC'selection campaign earlier this year, Zuma has been in a giving mood, forking out cash from his pocket without hesitation when asked to do so by people he has visited on the campaign trail.

By the Sunday Times's reckoning, Zuma has paid at least R1900 so far, but the figure will probably increase within the next three weeks as the ANC leader intensifies his campaign ahead of the May 7 general elections.

Zuma is not the first president to give out money while on the road campaigning - former president Thabo Mbeki did so on occasion in the run-up to the 2004 polls - but he is the first to do so out of his own pocket.

In Mbeki's case, if a resident of a township or informal settlement asked him for money after explaining the tough conditions in which he lived, he responded by asking one of the government or ANC officials accompanying him to give the person cash.

In private, many of those officials often complained that the president never paid them back.

But with Zuma, things have been different.

He clearly walks around with plenty of cash in his pockets while campaigning.

The first recipient of the president's "generosity" was Hezekiel Senyolo, a resident of Mabopane near Pretoria.

When Zuma visited Senyolo's dilapidated one-room house last month as part of his drive to garner votes, the sickly man, who is in his late 60s, asked the president for money to "buy groceries".

Zuma promptly produced a wad of crisp R100 notes amounting to R1000 from his pocket and handed it to Senyolo.

When Zuma left the house, Senyolo was full of praise for the president.

"He's the best ... he says he will remove us from these asbestos houses that make us sick," said Senyolo.

On Saturday last week, during his visit to Parys in the Free State, Zuma gave R700 to 75-year-old Lydia Kolisa.

She had regaled Zuma with stories of how she used to hide young anti-apartheid activists, including current Free State premier Ace Magashule, from the security police during the bad old days.

As the two spoke, her story increasingly focused on her current circumstances.

She pleaded poverty, prompting Zuma to take out a few R100 notes.

Kolisa protested: "But what am I going to buy a drink with?"

Zuma put his hand back in his pocket and took out another R600.

Another pensioner who benefited from Zuma's magnanimity was Port Elizabeth's Nompithi Limaphi, who smiled broadly when the president gave her R200 to buy "small things" for her two-year-old grandson.

"I am so excited ... my heart is as white as a doctor's robe," she said as she thanked Zuma and his ANC entourage.

Zuma had sat with her on the couch in her new low-cost house as she recounted her story of having lived in a shack for more than 20 years.

But it is long-time friend and fellow Robben Island prisoner Riot Mkhwanazi who has benefited most from Zuma during this campaign.

Although Zuma did not leave wads of cash after visiting Mkhwanazi in Empangeni, near Richards Bay, last month, he did present him with a large side-by-side fridge and a sheep.

This week, however, the president seemed to have left his wallet behind.

Despite visiting several homes in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, he did not hand out any money.

Instead, he gave ANC election T-shirts to residents in Hammarsdale, outside Durban, and Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape.

Election campaign takes back seat to war of the T-shirts

A few minutes after President Jacob Zuma left the home of Rodger Sishi in Hammarsdale, Durban, on Tuesday, scores of people arrived and demanded ANC T-shirts.

"We were told that a box of T-shirts was delivered here ... we want ANC T-shirts," said one woman, a member of a group gathered outside the gate at the late soccer boss's house.

A senior family member - wearing an ANC T-shirt she had just received from Zuma - tried to explain that the politicians had only brought enough shirts for the Sishis.

But few seemed convinced and some mumbled that the family was withholding the election campaign items.

But not everyone was concerned about clothing. An older ANC supporter wondered why Zuma was visiting "nice homes" in the area.

"He must go to the shacks and not these houses where you can see that owners are well-off," said the old woman, who gave her name as maMthembu.

Sishi was the chairman of the Premier Soccer League's forerunner, the National Professional Soccer League, in the 1980s.

The Sishi house is far from being posh. But by township standards it is positively lavish, boasting extensions, a double garage and prefab walls.

T-shirts are a major part of political campaigns and are used by political parties in their propaganda battles.

And the masses, mostly the poor, are only too keen to play along - even if their only goal is to get some new clothes.

Pictures have been posted on social media sites of political leaders offering T-shirts to supporters of rival groups.

But the T-shirt frenzy is a major headache for security officials. When Zuma and KwaZulu-Natal premier Senzo Mchunu went to the Hammarsdale mall, they were mobbed in the centre's narrow passages by people wanting to take pictures of the president.

But when Mchunu threw a few T-shirts into the crowd, there was more pushing.

ANC marshals and the police had their hands full trying to force back the surging crowds.

• ngalwas@sundaytimes.co.za