In its pre-publicity for former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils’s book, the publisher promised journalists that it would be hard to put it down as his writing style is racy and the subject matter is explored by an insider with unique knowledge.
Many publishers
oversell their products. But A Simple Man was hard to put down —
especially in SA’s highly charged political environment, in which
President Jacob Zuma is the prominent character in the tragic tale of
state capture and corruption.
The book reads like a spy novel. But it
is not a work of fiction, as it deals with issues in which Kasrils
was one of the central players, spanning several decades predating
democratic SA.
The photograph
on the cover must have been taken donkey’s years ago, when Kasrils
and Zuma were close friends in the liberation struggle.
Kasrils
rose through the ranks of Umkhonto weSizwe after it was formed in
1962, becoming a commander and a head of its intelligence structure.
Zuma also rose through the ranks of the ANC in exile, eventually
achieving the position of head of intelligence of the liberation
movement in exile.
The two fought
side by side to liberate SA, but — after reading A Simple Man —
it appears it would now be a miracle if they had a coffee together.
Kasrils paints a
picture of Zuma’s complex character — or rather his affinity for
wearing a mask as a simple rural man while in reality he is hiding
his rather calculated politics, which he often uses to get ahead of
his rivals within the ANC.
He attempts to
demystify the demeanour that Zuma fashioned for himself, that of a
simple man from the rural areas who comrades tried, unsuccessfully,
to prevent from becoming the president of the ANC.
Zuma
would have SA believe that prior to the Polokwane conference in 2007,
when he was accused of raping Fezekile Kuzwayo — the daughter of
one of his comrades — his rivals jumped on the incident to kill his
ambition to become president of the ANC and the country.
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