'A good leader leaves when his time is up': A nation tweets for #Zexit

12 February 2018 - 14:05 By Penwell Dlamini
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President Jacob Zuma. File photo.
President Jacob Zuma. File photo.
Image: Esa Alexander

While the nation held its breath on Monday as the ANC's national executive committee planned to meet in Irene‚ Pretoria‚ to possibly decide the fate of President Jacob Zuma‚ people took to Twitter to air their views on the call for Zuma to step down.

One of those was academic Jonathan Jansen, who tweeted: “A good leader leaves when his/her time is up. You do not fight tooth and nail to leave with conditions. That's what crooked leaders do.”

Poet and novelist Mandla Langa quoted from Erich Fromm, saying: "Optimism is an alienated form of faith‚ pessimism an alienated form of despair… To have faith means to dare‚ to think the unthinkable‚ yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible."

Langa added that we must trust our own collective agency to bring about change.

Political analyst Justice Malala also weighed in on the issue:

“#Zuma is digging in because he is convinced he still has enough support in ANCNEC to shield him from a recall. What does he know? #ZumaExit”

There were also interesting views expressed on Sunday about Zuma.

One was from Palesa Morudu: “Comparing the removal of Jacob to the removal of the whole apartheid regime is frankly quite astonishing.”

Entrepreneur Vusi Thembekway also shared his views: “Why is #CyrilRamaphosa speaking at a church. Was it not the ANC that told us that church & religious leaders should not involve themselves in politics when the church stood against ANC rot?”

He was referring to statements that Zuma made that church leaders should pray for politicians and not be involved in political battles.


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