TOM EATON | There is a growing demand for what Zuma is selling

For a country that races from one crisis to the next with the speed and eagerness of an athletic idiot running through a series of plate glass windows, we do sometimes think surprisingly slowly.

On January 2, for example, SABC news reported the return of load-shedding “raises questions about the reliability of South Africa’s power infrastructure and the potential economic implications of continued power disruptions”.

Admittedly, these are important questions and I hope the SABC finds answers as soon as it finishes investigating the reliability of Zeppelins and the potential economic implications of Mussolini coming to power in Italy; but asking them 25 years after Eskom told Thabo Mbeki there was a problem suggests we shouldn’t hold our breath for an answer.

Nobody thinks more slowly than Fikile Mbalula, the gold-rimmed void at the centre of South Africa’s pantheon of non-intellectuals. There are day-old omelettes with better and more interesting ideas.

Which is why, I suspect, he said what he said at the weekend when he waded into Jacob Zuma’s decision to leave the ANC and decamp to the 18th century (more of this in a moment).

Wearing a stylish camouflage cap — a redundant bit of gear, given how many people look straight through Mbalula’s head when they see it — the secretary-general was all self-righteousness as he explained how disappointed the ANC was that the five magic beans it had been offered as payment for its soul were, in fact, just five standard borlotti beans, and four of them had gone mouldy.

“In defence of our president,” complained Mbalula, “we went to parliament and opened an ad hoc committee and said a swimming pool is a fire pool ... It’s difficult to explain lies but we said that swimming pool was a fire pool.” 

To be fair, it should be pointed out that Mbalula was one of Zuma’s fiercest critics back in the day, or at least one of his less vocal supporters, or at least one of those who prostrated themselves before him but kept their pinky off the ground in an act of defiance.

Still, that record meant nothing at the weekend as his critics whooped and cheered over what they saw as a spectacular own goal.

In South Africa the disenchantment with democracy seems particularly acute, as half of our population has only ever known democracy to be a system designed to enrich untouchable villains and crush honest endeavour  

The EFF, in particular, rushed to its spiritual home — X, formerly Twitter — to tell itself Mbalula had exposed the ANC for what it was, as if none of this has been patently clear for decades.

After all, Mbalula might find it “difficult to explain lies” these days, but he found them pretty easy to defend or deny in 2015 when he and the current president voted in favour of a motion that absolved Zuma of wrongdoing over the fire pool he’s kvetching about now.

No, there’s a lot of fairly sluggish mental activity happening. But someone who’s thinking surprisingly quickly is Zuma. 

At first glance, Zuma’s new party seems transparently cynical. In its new iteration, “uMkhonto weSizwe” translates roughly as “to have one last stab at the wallet of the nation”.

But I would also suggest that in a crowded electoral marketplace Zuma has identified a real and potentially lucrative gap. 

Until now there have been two voting blocs in this country: those who want to participate in constitutional democracy through democratic elections and those who don’t, and who have therefore chosen not to vote. At the moment our fate lies squarely in the hands of the latter, a group which, in a bitter irony, refuses to save the rest of us because it believes it doesn’t have any power to change anything.

Zuma, however, understands a growing number of people in both blocs want a third, and, until now, untapped option: premodern, benevolent dictatorship. 

This trend is not just a local phenomenon. This year the US will vote on whether it wants to stick with a knackered two-party democracy or start dabbling in theocracy. But in South Africa the disenchantment with democracy seems particularly acute, as half of our population has only ever known democracy to be a system designed to enrich untouchable villains and crush honest endeavour.

It's not surprising that an Afrobarometer poll conducted last year found that slightly more than 70% of South Africans would be willing to install an unelected leader if it guaranteed less crime and more jobs and houses. 

No, Zuma knew exactly what he was doing at the weekend when he denounced the democratic process that made him president, telling a rent-a-crowd of fart-catchers that “the country is not run by the majority. It is run by a few who sit in parliament”.

“Traditional leaders don't have any power,” he said. “Religious leaders who are the ones who are taking care of our wellbeing in the name of God don't get a single thing... 

“In other words,” he said, cutting to the chase, “majority's views do not matter and that is democracy.” 

It’s opportunistic. It’s hypocritical. It’s overtly anti-democratic, appealing directly to those who want to be told what to do by aristocrats and priests.

But as much as liberals and democrats might object, it is also true that there is a growing demand for what Zuma is selling.

We might not end up buying it from him this year. But he has set out his stall and surely other, more plausible salesmen will follow.