South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has come under pressure from the country’s main opposition party that is accusing him of making “outrageously sexist comments”.
The opposition has accused the president of making sexist comments when he told female journalists on Saturday that it had become difficult to compliment women in a “white man’s world”.
Mr Zuma, who has four wives, said modern women were too quick to say they were being harassed when men were innocently complimenting them, it reports.
“It’s a pity we live in a white man’s world; you can’t even say ‘Gqezu, Gqezu ntomazane! Nongenazo izinkomo uyayidla inyama’,” it quotes him as saying.
This was a Zulu saying loosely which means that even if you don’t have enough money to pay lobola, you can still get married.
According to News24, Zuma added that if men could compliment women the way they did in the past, his bodyguards would compliment the journalists, News 24 reports.
Mr Zuma was in rural areas on Saturday to urge people to register for upcoming local elections
He reportedly made the comments while being flanked by one of his wives, Tobeka Madiba Zuma, and eight-year-old, during a voter registration campaign in his rural heartland of KwaZulu-Natal.
In her reaction, Democratic Alliance (DA) party spokeswoman Phumzile Van Damme said the comments were “outrageously sexist and an insult to every single woman in our country”.
