The survival samba of leaders on the floor

A little bird once whispered in my ear about a private conversation between a president of an African economic powerhouse and his East European counterpart.

The two were gossiping about the president of a South American country who had angered them by not supporting their call for a proposed new international development bank not to be headquartered in Beijing.

Feeling betrayed after the South American voted in support of two Asian members of their five-member state association, the two presidents are said to have consoled themselves with the widespread prediction that she would soon be out of office.

It was a few months before the South American nation went to the polls and the country’s two major cities went up in smoke as more than a million protesters took to the streets, disgusted by a government that had spent billions of dollars building new and unnecessary stadiums in preparation for a soccer tournament.

The pictures of the angry protesters on television were spectacular, leaving any visitor to that country without much doubt that the president was unpopular and would not survive the elections.

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But she did, winning re-election with 51.59% of the vote and securing her seat at the high table of the exclusive multinational club for another five years — or at least as long as she succeeds in fighting off renewed attempts by her country’s congress to have her impeached.

I don’t know if the two presidents were disappointed to see her voted back in.

But what I do suspect is that there is a lot of mutual respect and admiration between embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and our own troubled president, Jacob Zuma, these days.

As things stand, the two are the ultimate survivors of the modern political era.

An easily shamed president would have fallen on her sword if, as in Rousseff’s case, more than two-thirds of her country’s legislators voted for her impeachment amid claims that she had manipulated government accounts.

But, like our Zuma, who has been resisting calls from within and outside his own party to resign, Rousseff won’t budge.

Instead, both argue, without evidence, that they are victims of a “regime change” conspiracy involving a coalition of local and overseas elites.

And although we often laugh at their excuses and dismiss them as the ramblings of cornered politicians, the scary thing is that their arguments usually mobilise enough citizens to defend their refusal to account for their misdeeds.

The question is why claims of victimhood in the two countries often resonate and find sympathy for the politician — especially among the poor.

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Here at home the spectacular failure that has been the #ZumaMustFall movement has been a study on the political impotence of our chattering classes.

Despite the noise about Freedom Day being D-day for our constitution contravening president, very few people turned up at the marches organised nationwide on Wednesday to demand his resignation.

There were more people at Giyani Stadium to hear Zuma’s Freedom Day message than at all the marches organised against him combined. Does that mean that the masses approve of Zuma’s poor performance in government as well as his conduct as head of state? Probably not.

Blaming it all on people’s dependence on social grants is lazy and does not explain the millions of others not on state welfare but who have also shunned the #ZumaMustFall movement.

The truth is that South Africa, like Brazil, remains a deeply divided country both in terms of race and social strata. As the first- and second-most unequal societies in the world, the two countries have many similar problems.

One of them is the trust deficit, which often tends to take a racial form here, and which makes meaningful dialogue about issues of mutual concern almost impossible.

Cunning politicians exploit that gap and use it to buffer the demands that they account for their actions.