Johannesburg - The controversies that President Jacob Zuma’s public remarks
sometimes trigger have been attributed to cultural misunderstandings
between the president and those who interpret his messages.
Mark Sanders, who lectures in comparative literature at New York
University, has suggested that Zuma’s use of the isiZulu idiom in his
public statements is sometimes misconstrued, City Press reported on Sunday
Using examples from Zuma’s 2006 rape trial, during which he addressed
the court in isiZulu, Sanders says that nuances in his speech are
sometimes lost in translation.
He says what Zuma said during the trial would not be difficult to
understand if the English media had attempted to report his comments
accurately.
“Reported accurately, what he actually said is not difficult to understand,” says Sanders.
Political analyst Protas Madlala believes Zuma gets short shrift from
his critics mainly because of his educational background and the
difficulty of translating cultural meaning.
“You can’t translate culture. The moment you translate cultural
meaning, it will have a different meaning altogether,” says Madlala.
But not everyone agrees.
Cultural expert and activist Nombonisa Gasa says the problem with the
president’s statements is not the language they are communicated in,
but the meaning they convey.
The issue with Zuma is that “his cultural references in terms of isiZulu are specific and frozen in time”, she says.
“In the culture that he harks back to, he suggests a world that is frozen – and that’s a problem.
She says there is something patronising about claims that Zuma is
misunderstood because it suggests that some people cannot “transcend”
village life.
When contacted for comment this week, presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj declined to respond.
But he did say that he was not worried about what commentators think of Zuma.