Former President Jacob Zuma hasn’t made major news for a few weeks now (what a relief, we know) but he’s managed to find his way back in. Why? Well, some of the comments he made while receiving a couple of awards.

The National Funeral Practitioners Association of South Africa (Nafupa SA) hosted a dinner event in Durban on Thursday. The association presented Zuma with two awards to “honour” him for his service to the country.

Zuma soon got talking about his removal and explained how “powerful” white business owners used black people to oust him from office.

“Whenever someone says something which white people dislike, he is attacked by the white establishment using black people. “This means that we are not yet free because we are still under their control. They threaten you to such an extent that you end up avoiding being targeted by them,” Zuma told the crowd.

Zuma’s two awards consisted of an achievement award for Radical Economic Transformation as well as an Infrastructure Development Award. The latter for improving roads in the country. The event was attended by many pro-Zuma groups including the controversial Black First Land First.

One political analyst even told Daily News that he had thought Zuma receiving an award was a “joke”.

“These guys are now seen as criminals by some and not as business people because of the way they operate. They’ve been in and out of courts, and they have been chasing away contractors from sites. “Now when you hear them saying they are rewarding somebody for having done a good job, you ask yourself what job has he done. To me what they’re doing is just a joke, just a way of getting publicity,” Thabani Khumalo said.

During the rest of Zuma’s onstage rant, he explained that what happened to him was similar to the slave trade in Africa where black people collaborated in selling their own people.

“White people don’t like when we say we never went to other countries to buy slaves. We did not conquer other continents and steal their economy.”

Zuma also said that economists “don’t tell us the truth” and hit out at the policies of the apartheid government.

Don’t expect Zuma to slip quietly into retirement, folks.