TOM EATON | Show me the Manyi: new EFF MP has been eerily quiet on the Zuma front

As Jacob Zuma’s cowardly attempt to harass Karyn Maughan and Billy Downer was dismissed with the contempt it deserved on Wednesday, the disgraced former president no doubt looked for a familiar shoulder to cry on but found only the abandoned footstool where Mzwanele Manyi once knelt.

Manyi, you will recall, has long competed with Carl Niehaus for the title of most loyal Zuma doormat. Where almost all of Zuma’s former yes-men drifted away after realising that the good times were over, Manyi stayed at his post, obediently heading the Jacob Zuma Foundation and banging out press releases pretending that Accused Number One was a respected statesman instead of the embodiment of systemic collapse in South Africa.

To his credit, it was an uncharacteristic display of loyalty. Manyi has joined three political parties in the last five years, yet his support for Zuma seemed unshakeable.

When an immovable object meets an irresistible force, however, things can change; and this week the immovable object of Manyi’s Zumaphilia met a force that has proved largely irresistible in South Africa: a large and regular salary.

On Wednesday, as Pietermaritzburg high court judge Paul Wallis told Zuma that he was “interdicted and restrained from reinstituting, proceeding with, or from taking any further steps pursuant to, the private prosecution”, a small, nostalgic part of Zuma must have hoped that Twitter was about to be flooded with outraged Manyi tweets declaring that justice had been perverted and that the One True King would rise like the Phoenix.

This, however, wasn’t just the week in which Zuma was told to stop his bullshit abuse of the courts. It was also the week in which Manyi prepared to be sworn in as an MP for the EFF, a just reward for being member of the party for one whole month. And so, alas, the pro-Zuma tweets seem to have stopped faster than you can say “He who pays the piper”.

Indeed, on Wednesday the only thing on Manyi’s Twitter feed was a highly illuminating explanation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“If you are struggling to understand the Ukraine/Russia conflict think of it this way,” wrote Manyi. “Would you be happy if your traditional opponent wanted to build a triple storey house at your next door neighbour, and overlook your property? Would you say your neighbour has rights?”

I say highly illuminating, because this tweet teaches us two things we didn’t know about the chameleon-like Mr Manyi.

The first is that he’s not a big fan of history, ignoring, in his analogy, the fact that the alarmed, besieged homeowner in question tried to kill his neighbour and his neighbour’s whole family in the 1930s when that neighbour had the temerity to suggest that property rights were a thing and perhaps he had a right to exist as an independent person.

Second, and perhaps more pertinently to voters, the EFF’s latest MP also seems to believe that disputes are best settled through murder rather than mediation.

After all, in Manyi’s justification of Russia’s invasion, the logic is clear: if your neighbour is considering allowing your “traditional opponent” to build in his yard (presumably because he’s afraid you might try to murder and/or colonise you again), you don’t seek legal recourse or consensus. Instead, you drive a tank through the hedge onto the property where, to be clear, your “traditional opponent” hasn’t yet built anything, and promptly destroy your neighbour’s house and kill a few members of his family as a warning to stop him discussing those building plans.

Anyway, I’m sure Manyi will be very happy with the EFF. Well, at least for the 18 months it takes him to get a better offer.