Jake and His Thugs

Another incident with Jacob Zuma's VIP Protection Unit ...

This time manhandling a journalist who wanted to take a picture of Zuma's entourage and then forcing the journalist to erase his pictures from his camera.

Why is this significant?

Because this behaviour is symptomatic of a number of much more significant issues.

Firstly, it demonstrates a very low tolerance for behaviour and activity that should be normal in a normal society. Consider the over-reaction to the Gesture by the UCT student. He could not have known for sure that Zuma was in one of the vehicles or even that it was a presidential entourage. So how could the student have been insulting a specific person, i.e. the president, when he could not have known for sure that the president was in the entourage?

Next, together with the first point there appears to be a growing paranoia amongst the ANC upper echelons that makes them increasingly intolerant of anything that may even imply criticism.

Things get sicker still ... I get a distinct impression that there is a distinct aspect of keeping up with the Jones in who has the biggest, meanest bodyguards. A kind of p****** contest between comrades.

Then Jacob Zuma and others take no public moral stance on the behaviour of these thugs, which implicitly condones their behaviour. And so they continue to behave abominably and even escalate their intolerant and arrogant behaviour.

Spare a thought, though, for these amped thugs ... the days of boredom ... no terrorist attempts to assassinate our good buddy Jake, not even rotten tomatoes get thrown at him ... So what's a thug to do to pass the time ...