Jacob Zuma

Ever since I was born I have never been involved in corruption and I will never be corrupt.

— Jacob Zuma

Even today, I would fight and die for you. I say that without any hesitation because that is what I stood for when I joined the struggle. I will stand for it until the end.

— Jacob Zuma

Me?! What? I don’t know, unless I must go to the dictionary and learn what a crook is. I’ve never been a crook. ... I'm saying I'm not a crook, I have never been a crook. I will never be a crook.

— Jacob Zuma

As Africans, long before the arrival of religion and [the] gospel, we had our own ways of doing things, ... Those were times that the religious people refer to as dark days but we know that, during those times, there were no orphans or old-age homes. Christianity has brought along these things.

— Jacob Zuma

We are going to shoot them, they are going to run; We are going to shoot them, with the machine gun; They are going to run. You are a white man – We are going to hit them – and you are going to run! Shoot the Boer! We are going to hit them – they are going to run! The Cabinet will shoot them with the machine gun! The Cabinet will shoot them with the machine gun! Shoot the Boer!

— Jacob Zuma

All the trouble began in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck landed in the Cape.

— Jacob Zuma

South Africans cannot believe that a man who never went to school is the President and that is the reason why he must be attacked 24/7 ... No one has ever said it is a miracle for this man to have become president and wrote a column about it.

— Jacob Zuma

The intention was not in pursuit of corrupt ends or to use state resources to unduly benefit me and my family. Hence, I have agreed to pay for the identified items once a determination is made. There are lessons to be learned for all of us in government which augur well for governance in the future.

— Jacob Zuma

The economy is not in our [i.e. black] hands, we are not in control of economic power. We have identified the weaknesses in [land reform]. Willing buyer, willing seller did not work. It made the state’s price tag an unfair process. In addition there are many laws dealing with land which cause confusion and delays. … Land hunger is real.

— Jacob Zuma

When I became ANC president in 2007, we needed to deal with the immediate challenge of HIV/Aids decimating our people. Today, millions of lives have been saved and transformed and we no longer see and read about “Aids babies” who die before their fifth birthday. South Africa today has the biggest treatment programme in the world with more than 3.9 million people on treatment by August 2017.

— Jacob Zuma

I fear no motion of no confidence or impeachment, for they are the lawful mechanisms for the people of this beautiful country to remove their president.

— Jacob Zuma

Criminality is always the result of poverty. Countries that experience such a fundamental change as we have - we had the apartheid regime and must now develop a multicultural democracy - must necessarily pass through a phase of high crime rates.

— Jacob Zuma