Rolling 50-deep, why?


Award-winning author of Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, William Gumede is poignantly asked a tricky question in the latest issue of Mail & Guardian. "what are the pointers of a flawed leader?". I got the impression that he didn't even need to ponder but shoots from his hip, "you can measure the potential for failure by the number of bodyguards a politician has. The bigger the convoy, the more likely he is to fail, to be a dictator".

Well, I reckon Bra Bill is not referring to anyone we know right now but he's just giving pointers, which should absolve him of any blame but those who might interpret his response to refer to, say Robert Mugabe or Jacob Zuma. Yeah, Zuma has the largest Security Detail of all politicians in South Afrika while Mugabe's cavalcade is rumoured to number 30 cars. Not even his Prime Minister is afforded such luxury as when he finally escaped an assassination attempt on Friday night which killed his wife, Morgan Tsvangirai was in a three car convoy.

But what Bra Bill said had me thinking about other areas, outside of politics (not even Idi Amin or Mobutu Sese Seko) but the music industry, especially the rap industry in the US. A rapper's shadiness (also called street cred) is judged based on how deep he is when rolling. The bigger your entourage the more respect you get in the 'hood. The most common depth is 50, which Terror Squad founder Joseph 'Fat Joe' Cartagena, after he was featured by Ja-Rule in New York-New York (Lean Back) and he spitted lines like "even Roy Jones was forced to lean back" he says the heavyweight boxer cornered him in a club in New York and asked him in no uncertain terms 'what the fuck he meant by that line?'. Fat Joe says he could see the rage in Jone's eyes and he told him to his face to try punching him. To paraphrase him he said, "I said 'okay, you the boxer, I don't doubt that you can land a punch on my face but I got like hundred niggas in this club and there's no way you are going to walk out of here alive. I'm 50 deep nigga'"

Yeah, Tupac was always 50-deep, Snoop is always 50-deep, so is 50 Cent, Ice Cube and most of the rappers with dodgy street creds. Does this mean that if Zuma was a rapper in the states people like Zwelinzima Vavi, Zizi Kodwa, Julius Malema, Blade Nzimande, Ranjeni Mununsamy and the bodyguards would have been what The Outlawz were to Tupac and Juniour to Notorious BIG. What happened to the most 50-deepest niggas in the industry? Idi Amin - dead, Tupac - dead, BIG - dead, and the crews prevailed.

Is there any lesson for Zuma here? Let's hope not, Bra Bill wasn't talking about him but promoting his second book, The Democracy Gap - Africa's Wasted Years.