'Do the unexpected to earn their trust': Jacob Zuma calls for ANC members to be honest at memorial lecture

"When you work with people, they must trust you," Zuma said in a broadcast of a memorial lecture in honour of a Defiance Campaign activist Johannes Phumani “Pass Four” Phungula in Ixopo.

"As a person, you must do the unexpected to earn their trust," the SABC quoted him as saying on Saturday.

He received a rousing welcome, fresh after his ANC colleague Derek Hanekom took him to court over a Tweet suggesting he is a spy after Zuma's bombshell opening statement at the Zondo Commission.

Zuma also reportedly urged ANC branch members to be actively involved in their communities during the memorial lecture.

The ANC is currently in the cross-hairs of a controversy over the source of funding for the campaign to lobby for Cyril Ramaposa to become its president.

Zuma has also consistently insisted that there has been a decades-long conspiracy against him which has driven much of the court action he has faced. 

Phungula had been an underground organiser near Ixopo, as well as being a unionist while working at Joko tea.

In the Defiance Campaign, apartheid's laws such as a law requiring black people to have a "pass" to move from one area to another, were openly defied. 

He also worked at the ANC's umKhonto weSizwe camps in Tanzania and Mozambique as the ANC's military wing strategised to overthrow the apartheid government. 

In a tribute to him in Parliament in August 2009, it was noted that he and Zuma had helped recruit young people to the ANC's underground structures.  

He died on August 9, 2009.

Zuma was an intelligence head during that era of the ANC.