Zuma: What they said about him
A lot of things were said about President Jacob Zuma during his time in the Union Buildings. A man who divided opinion until his very last day in office, President Zuma was the subject of many a dinner table conversation.
Here are some of the best quotes about President Zuma:
We are very proud because we have a people’s president, a humble president. You never want to pay revenge. You were not built by newspapers, you were not built by the media, you were not built by the elite, you were not built by the bourgeoisie, you come from the toiling rural masses of Nkandla.
ANC Women’s League President Bathabile Dlamini to President Jacob Zuma at a Women’s Day Event in Kimberley, 2017
However, as President of the Republic I have come to the conclusion that the circumstances dictate that in the interests of the Honourable Deputy President, the government, our young democratic system, and our country, it would be best to release the Honourable Jacob Zuma from his responsibilities as Deputy President of the Republic and member of the Cabinet.
President Thabo Mbeki firing Jacob Zuma as his deputy president in 2005
You are a broken man presiding over a broken society.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane during the State of the Nation debate in parliament in 2016
The president failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution.
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng during Nkandla judgment in the Constitutional Court in 2016
President Jacob Zuma is surrounded by snakes in the ANC.
ANC Youth League leader Collen Maine in Durban in 2016
At a personal level, the Prez is empathetic and charming. As we walked through the ash and ruins he asked me how I was bearing up personally.
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille in a tweet shortly after the Knysna fires in 2017
Zuma is dumb … he is the number one fool, and it took me one year after the Polokwane conference to realise that he is dumb. Zuma wanted to continue molesting me without Vaseline.
EFF leader Julius Malema on President Zuma
To be honest, sometimes Zuma just feels like one big fake news on a website.
Save SA convener Sipho Pityana before the 2017 State of the Nation address.
We're very worried that this leader had relations with a woman who regarded him as a parent and, although he is very likable, we have to ask ourselves: 'What is happening in the ANC?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu following the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007
Had Rudyard Kipling known of this case at the time he wrote his poem, ‘If’, he might have added the following: ‘And, if you can control your body and your sexual urges, then you are a man, my son’.
Judge Willem van der Merwe, handing down his verdict that exonerated Zuma of rape in 2006