Jacob Zuma has been accused of corruption, acquitted of rape, sings “Bring me
my machinegun”, wears T-shirts proclaiming “100% Zulu boy”, and is a
polygamist who believes that taking a shower after sex will prevent Aids.
He has also just been elected president of the African National Congress,
which should make him a shoo-in as South Africa’s next president, even
though critics say he will turn the country into a basket case that could
drag down half of Africa.
While some wealthy whites shudder in their gated communities, Zuma’s
supporters say he will stand up for the poor and “rescue” a South Africa
that has lost its way and failed to deliver prosperity to the black
majority.
Will the man who could be running South Africa, when the eyes of the world
turn on it for the 2010 football World Cup, turn into a Robert Mugabe-style
wrecker who could destroy the dream of the Rainbow Nation and wreak economic
havoc? Not necessarily.
Ironically, Zuma has so far taken a harder line towards Mugabe, advising him
to “turn away from injustice”, while President Thabo Mbeki, who lost the
party leadership to Zuma last week, sticks to soft-talking diplomacy.
With the ANC attracting nearly 70% of the vote, only a conviction for
corruption or a split in the party might prevent a Zumani (the Zuma
tsunami), which would make him president. In his acceptance speech Zuma
talked of the need to “heal the ANC” and said the “two presidents” should
have “smooth working relations” until the 2009 national elections. But Mbeki
is effectively a lame duck.
It is hard to imagine two men with greater contrasting styles: Mbeki has a
degree in economics from Sussex University and peppers his speeches with
Shakespearian references. Zuma is an uneducated populist who enjoys posing
in a loincloth with a Zulu shield. The ANC abhors tribalism, but Zulus are
the country’s largest ethnic group. Both presidents Mbeki and Nelson Mandela
were Xhosa and many Zulus in the country think that, too, is due for change.
Arguably Zuma more closely represents the experience of ordinary blacks. His
mother was a domestic servant and his father a policeman who died when Zuma
was just a child, meaning the family could not afford his education. He
moved with his mother to the Durban suburbs and became a “kitchen boy”.
Dressed in the white calico shorts of colonial servants, he would rise at dawn
to polish floors or clean windows. But as a teenager he was already
attending political education meetings organised by the ANC. At 16 he joined
the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and was arrested a year later
trying to flee the country for military training abroad.
He served 10 years in jail where fellow inmates recall him as forever
cheerful, regaling them with stories of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift that he
had heard as a child repeated by old warriors. “He would tell stories in a
very dramatic way and he was a good singer, dancer and football player,”
recalls a former cellmate.
On release he worked in the ANC’s underground and by 1987 he had become the
armed movement’s intelligence chief. He returned to South Africa on
Mandela’s release in 1990 and was given the hard task of calming down the
KwaZulu-Natal district, torn with bloody fighting between the ANC and the
Inkatha party of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Zulu chief.
This involved taking on the fearsome Harry Gwala, a ruthless killer who had
been Zuma’s mentor but was now out to kill him. In the end Zuma effected an
Inkatha reconciliation and outlived Gwala.
By 1996 Zuma was deputy president of the ANC and in 1999 he was made deputy
president of South Africa, the same year his recently divorced wife,
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, became foreign minister. His private life has been
colourful. He has had at least three wives, several at the same time in line
with Zulu custom, and is the father of 20 children by nine women.
His business dealings have caused him most problems and could yet keep him
from the presidency. In 2004 his financial adviser, the Durban businessman
Schabir Shaik, was investigated over bribery allegations to acquire arms
contacts. It emerged that he had been making payments to Zuma that included
subsidising the cost of his luxurious estate. Judge Hilary Squires called
their relationship a “mutually beneficial symbiosis”.
Charges were brought against Zuma but were later struck down, although now
prosecutors say they have new evidence.
This was not Zuma’s only brush with the law. In 2005 he was accused of rape by
the 31-year-old daughter of a respected ANC comrade who said that she had
gone to Zuma’s house to ask advice when he forced his 18 stone bulk upon
her.
Zuma did not deny the sex but said it was consensual, although the language he
used would not delight feminists: “In Zulu culture you cannot leave a woman
if she is ready. To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape,”
he said, claiming that she had signalled her sexual desire by turning up in
a short skirt.
He also admitted that despite knowing the woman was HIV positive he had not
bothered to use a condom. “I had a shower afterwards,” he said with a smile.
The jury acquitted him but the trial led to a flood of satirical cartoons.
One, captioned “Jacob Zuma’s 101 uses for a condom”, included: “Keeping
spectacles used to see short skirts better, court summons holder, to keep
your lost marbles (if ever found)” and “as a shower cap for having an Aids
prevention shower”. Zuma responded by suing the newspapers and a radio
station, alleging, “my person has been subjected to all sorts of allegations
and innuendo”. The South African media have accused him of threatening
freedom of speech.
There are reasons to be wary of Zuma’s shoot-from-the-hip attitude if he were
in power. He has advocated tackling crime by reintroducing the death penalty
and forbidding legal aid to those accused of serious crimes. South Africa’s
gays would also be disturbed by a president who describes same sex marriages
as “a disgrace to the nation and to God”, adding: “When I was growing up, an ungqingili
(a rude Zulu word for homosexual) would not have stood in front of me. I
would have knocked him out.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu claims “the country
would be ashamed” of a President Zuma.
It is not how he talks but how he would act in office that matters most. Not
just the health of South Africa’s economy is at stake – although many in the
business community think he will not rock the boat and the rand did not dive
on news of his election – but also those of Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana,
Angola, Swaziland, Lesotho and even Zambia, which depend on its current
vibrancy.
Among those who could challenge him is Tokyo Sexwale, the successful
businessman, and his former wife the foreign minister. More than a few would
see an irony in Zuma’s ambition being frustrated by a woman. But not many
would bet on it.
