We can't take this lying down

Jacob Zuma has given the presidency and polygamy a bad name, and his country burns with embarrassment

I took a big box of condoms to President Zuma's office this week. A gross of them, wrapped up in a red ribbon and delivered in time for Valentine's Day, when the father of the nation and South Africa's most prominent lover is likely to be swept off his feet romancing not only three of his remaining five wives plus a new fiancée but the secret sweethearts we haven't yet met.
Although the president apologized to the nation for fathering a love child four months ago, he was sorry only when subjected to immense pressure, having hitherto offered a range of excuses for his irresponsibility. (And if the story hadn't come out in the media, he wouldn't have been sorry at all). In any case, it is the second time he has had to apologize for his sexual misconduct. So better to be safe than sorry, I reasoned when delivering the condoms. They might serve as a backstop to his resolve in a notably reform-resistant sphere of behavior.
Heading across the street towards ANC headquarters at Luthuli House, a plain-clothed security agent stepped forward, staring suspiciously at the glossy box I proferred. On hearing that it was a Valentine's Day package for the president, he told me to leave it at reception and waved me impatiently onward. I guess women drop off pressies for JZ all the time.
Inside, a young woman cop handled the parcel with care, gave me a pen to write the president's name on the wrapping, asked me to sign my name on a delivery form, sniggered briefly, and promised to give the undisclosed contents to her leader. It was Monday mid-morning. Dozens of party workers were filing in and out the building at the start of another busy week as I hurried away.
How does JZ do it? Timewise, that is. People want to know, and quite insistently now that we realise how many women he habitually woos while running the country. We can't speculate too graphically on bodily and psychological matters where the country's most esteemed personage is concerned, but let's never forget that this man is in charge of a nation suffering from rampant sexuality on a scale that has left us battling for years to contain the highest HIV/Aids rate in the world. His government  - the South African taxpayer, in other words – has spent billions trying to create awareness of safe sex, yet he, numero uno, brazenly produces a love child. Doesn't JZ know that it is promiscuity, on top of the legacy of apartheid, that has produced a fatherless nation with extremely violent tendencies?
Why doesn't he care about his hypocrisy?
When you consider how fortunate we were to have courtly Nelson Mandela as our role model, followed by perverse presidential sexology ever since (with a brief respite under Kgalema Motlanthe) it makes you resent all the more JZ's fiddling between the spread sheets and populist love songs while the country burns with embarrassment. Previous head of state, Thabo Mbeki, so rejected the idea of a rampaging HIV/Aids virus offering proof of the racist stereotype that black men "are unable to control our urges, unable to keep our legs crossed, unable to keep it in our pants" - as he toe-curlingly quoted to Parliament a few years back - that he simply ducked into denial. Zuma has been humiliatingly pilloried for indiscriminate sexual behavior in a time of Aids, but he carries on regardless.
Many of us gave JZ the benefit of the doubt on several counts of suspected sexual misbehavior, until we discovered that he'd had unprotected sex with the daughter of one of his friends. Again. Now there's no denying that he's given both the presidency and polygamy a bad name. When he meets the Queen at Buckingham Palace in a fortnight, you can be sure every courtier and foot soldier – and indeed ma'am herself - will be sniggering behind their gloved hands. The fact is, our president's sexploits have made South Africa an international joke regardless of Zuma's politically pragmatic apology a few days ahead of his annual state of the nation address on the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, and his imminent visit to the UK.
This is why we should laugh mockingly with the rest of the world at JZ's sleazy style, lest we are assumed to be an incurably caddish country that can be fobbed off with one insincere presidential apology after another. I'm even thinking Condoms for the President could become a national campaign – jokingly (as a reminder, and a warning) of course.
You could hear in the public outcry locally that JZ had crossed one too many lines on this occasion. Among the transgressions incurring just about everybody's scorn at his carnal overdrive is the disregard a twentieth child signals for the worrisome future of the planet. You don't have to be a fan of China's one-child policy to understand that resources are finite and threatened by overpopulation. Millions of concerned activists are currently creating awareness of this and other global survival issues (and indeed South Africa has won applause for its decision to cut carbon emissions dramatically). A radical comedian in Holland went so far recently as to tell Dutch audiences that, if hell-bent on having another baby, they should kill an existing child.
Why isn't JZ aware of the damaging contradictions in his behavior?  

One hopes the condoms left for him at Lithuli House this week will come in handy because, should he slip up again, the country isn't likely to take another presidential sex scandal lying down.