Today I had the fun experience of hearing Fikile Mbalula, ANC Youth League head honcho, interviewed on the radio. (And not for the first time, found myself wishing that 702 would put up transcripts… but since they don’t, you’ll just have trust me.) One caller threw Fikile a pair of revealing questions. First, what is the official ANCYL position on Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser? Do they believe she is lying? Second, what will the ANCYL do if Zuma is convicted? Will they still support him for the presidency of the ANC and South Africa?

Mbalula replied with a predictable but unsatisfying bit of sophistry. Apparently the ANCYL does not have an opinion on whether the woman is telling the truth; that is for the courts to decide. (But their ongoing and vociferous support for Zuma implicitly suggests otherwise.) In response to the second question, he would only say that the ANCYL “will cross that bridge if they come to it”: in other words, they’re leaving their options open. Given that one of the “options” they’re refusing to foreclose would be “supporting a convicted rapist for the presidency of the country”, this is actually tells us quite a bit about the people who run the ANCYL, none of it good.

If the ANCYL were being completely honest, I suspect they would tell us that they really don’t care whether or not Zuma raped the woman. They have a political programme, and they believe Zuma would implement it if he had the chance. Beyond that, their only concern is political viability: will the trial wreck Zuma’s political ambitions or leave them intact? From beginning to end, the essence of the ANCYL is cynicism.

Nevertheless, it amazes me that there are still people who want Zuma to be president. Look at it this way: South Africa is fighting a constant struggle against AIDS, rape, corruption and crime. Here comes Zuma, accused of raping an HIV-positive AIDS activist, with his love children and his corrupt ties to Schabir Shaik, and we’re supposed to make him president? The only way that he could more fully epitomise what South Africa is trying not to be is if he were to hijack a car or something.