April 24, 2009. Copyright 2009, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Jacob Zuma: new president of the Rainbow nation has a colourful past
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, April 24, Graphic News:  His supporters claim he is their country’s first truly “African” president, but can South Africa’s new leader, Jacob Zuma, translate his charismatic appeal to millions of its most oppressed citizens into a new beginning for the Rainbow nation?

Zuma, whose African National Congress Party has won the fourth general election since the end of apartheid, could not appear more different from either his predecessor Thabo Mbeki, whose European ways and intellectual stance alienated many, or from Nelson Mandela --- who is still revered around the world as a kind of living saint. 

With a trail of corruption and rape allegations in his wake, South Africa’s new president is also its most polarizing politician. Whether posing in Zulu leopard skins or singing the anti apartheid song, Bring Me My Machine Gun, at rallies, the “100% Zulu boy” touches a nerve: some fear he’ll bring economic chaos and embarrassment but many more hope he will finally deliver prosperity to the poor black majority.

Born in 1942 in Zululand to a domestic servant and a policeman who died when he was still a child, Zuma himself worked as a “kitchen boy” and certainly tasted the poverty that still blights the lives of so many. As a teenager he joined the ANC and was jailed for 10 years on Robben Island for his part in the anti-apartheid struggle.

He scaled the ANC ranks and eventually became deputy president but was sacked in 2005 amid charges of fraud. A year later he was accused of raping a 31-year-old woman. The polygamist politician claimed that, as a Zulu warrior, it was his duty to have sex with the HIV positive woman because she was wearing a “short skirt”. He provoked scandal by saying that he had avoided infection by showering afterwards.
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That time he was found not guilty, but he has found it harder to shake off allegations of money laundering and racketeering stemming from an arms deal in 1999. The case was finally dropped shortly just weeks before the polls, with the ANC claiming that the allegations were politically motivated. That Zuma won the party leadership from Mbeki in 2007 reflects escalating discontent with its achievements of the past decade.

Zuma, who enjoys strong support from trade unions and the communists, assumes the presidency as Africa’s largest economy is reeling from sky high unemployment and endemic crime. He has already allayed fears that he will overhaul its economic policy, but South Africans hope he’ll provide a change not just of style but of substance.
/ENDS