Jacob Zuma on Africa Diaspora Skills Links - extracts from new film 'Still My Home'

JACOB ZUMA, President Thabo Mbeki’s chief opponent for the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) at its conference this week, has become the target of a last-minute smear campaign.

Details of the suicide note left by one of Zuma’s four wives, Kate, who took an overdose at the age of 44 in 2000, were contained in a document sent to news organisations last week.

In the note, she described “24 years of hell” while married to Zuma, who is the frontrunner in the ANC leadership race.

The couple had five children together.

Although a government spokesman, Themba Maseko, immediately denied any government responsibility, denouncing the report as “malicious and tasteless in the extreme”, it was widely assumed by ANC delegates gathering in Polokwane that someone within the Mbeki camp was responsible.

Their suspicion was deepened by Maseko’s suggestion that the report was probably leaked by apartheid-era intelligence agents who, it was suggested, released another mysterious report earlier this year claiming that Zuma might be planning a military coup.

The report said he had already received the backing of other African leaders, notably Angola’s President Eduardo dos Santos and Libya’s Muammar Gadaffi.

Investigation of that report, however, indicated that its sources were within government circles. Zuma has denied receiving any money from Gadaffi although the financial backing for his well-funded campaign remains mysterious.

The latest smear fits into the long-term Mbeki strategy of using his promotion of “gender equity” as a weapon against Zuma. Mbeki has urged a policy of equal representation for women and appointed a female deputy president since he dismissed Zuma from that job in June 2005. He has spoken of the desirability of having a woman president.

Zuma, by contrast, is a genial Zulu patriarch credited with fathering 20 children by nine different women. A rape trial in 2006 in which he was found not guilty appeared to be the result of a honeytrap. He had to admit in court to having had casual and unprotected sex with a woman half his age whom he knew to be HIV-positive. He then took a shower in the belief that this might protect him from infection.

Outraged feminists insist that the verdict did not mean that he was innocent, merely that the rape charge was not proven. Mbeki, meanwhile, has stirred the pot by saying that he is sure the ANC will never elect “rapists and criminals” as its leaders.

Even Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town, begged delegates not to elect Zuma. “They should please not choose someone of whom most of us would be ashamed,” he said.

Yet in spite of numerous attempts to prosecute Zuma for corruption, fraud, and tax evasion, all the indications are that he is about to crush Mbeki in the leadership contest.

A decision by the African National Congress Women’s League to support Zuma was met with a torrent of denunciation from the Mbeki camp. But it reflected the degree to which the ANC remains a deeply patriarchal movement.

Zwelinzima Vavi, a strong Zuma supporter and union leader, said he was fed up with “legendary womanisers” (meaning Mbeki) who promoted women so that they could exploit them for their own ends.

Vavi is also dismissive of late bribes, job offers and other inducements being held out to delegates by the Mbeki camp. The Afrikaner nationalists did that too, he says.

“So we all took their food and hand-outs and voted for the ANC anyway. We’ll do the same with Mbeki’s bribes and vote for Zuma anyway.”

Zuma arrived with the aura of a winner and was able to take the high ground by appealing to delegates not to allow their votes to be bought. “We have never been that kind of party,” he declared.

Zuma promises that he will happily accept whatever the conference votes for, which is a measure of his confidence. Mbeki has made no such commitment but continues to talk loftily of how the conference has many other issues to settle besides the leadership question.

“Either he’s frightened of losing or else he’s in denial about the very possibility of it,” one delegate said this weekend.

“As for the sexual smears, they’re just about equal. Good going when you realise that both Zuma and Mbeki are 65.”

Times Recommends

• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Indian Army spends10m rupees on golf buggies
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating