Is Laughter the Best Medicine? #ThingsZumaLaughsAt VIDEOS

Just when the furore had almost died down over President Jacob Zuma’s comment about the ANC coming first, before South Africa, he seems to have opened up attacks on that same front again – saying the ANC came first, before democracy – and for laughing too much in the face of the country’s problems.

Zuma came to parliament on Thursday for the fourth and last time this year, to answer six questions that were given to him in advance, and he made comments on, among other things, the expansion of free wi-fi in South Africa, South Africa’s relations with Israel and Palestine, and an investigation into the state of education.

But it was his repeated laughter that drew the attention and ire of parliamentarians and then the country, with the hashtag #ThingsZumaLaughsAt still trending on Friday. With the country facing student protests, a failing economy, allegations of government corruption and droughts, it was hardly a time for mirth, many said.

Early in the debate, the EFF’s Mbuyiseni Ndlozi stood up on a point of order after Zuma had answered a question.

“The president answers the question, says absolutely nothing, and then he laughs,” said Ndlozi. “It means decisions are jokes!” Ndlozi said this was not the Trevor Noah show.

The EFF’s Mbuyiseni Ndlozi summed up the feelings of many in parliament on Friday in his comment to Zuma:

https://youtu.be/iGDpVEUIRcI

“I don’t know how to stop my laughter. Is it hurting?” Zuma said. “I will always laugh.”

One parliamentarian stood up and said Zuma would live a long life, because he was listening to the advice to laugh every day.

In response to a question asking him to clarify what he meant by the ANC coming before South Africa, which he made recently at a congress of the ANC in KwaZulu Natal, Zuma said he made the statement as the president of the ANC, not the president of South Africa.

However, he continued, “The ANC started the fight for a democratic South Africa in 1912. It fought all the time until it liberated South Africa … and the ANC is taking South Africa to its prosperity.”

In response to Democratic Alliance MP Geordin Hill-Lewis, Zuma said, “when I address the ANC members‚ I speak to the ANC but when I speak to South Africa‚ I speak to the country”. But then he carried on, “Who came first? Was it a democratic country or was it the ANC? … Who came first? Who came first?”

And then he laughed.

Zuma in the “Who came first” video:

One news report quoted Zuma as replying to a question – in Zulu – about the appointment of presidential adviser Vuma Mashinini as a commissioner of the Independent Electoral Commission ANC with the following: “The ANC worked and persevered to bring South Africa to where it is. It was indeed the ANC that was at the forefront of bringing liberation to this country. Democracy is a child of the ANC. You best not forget that”.