Zuma: South Africa's likely next president is no Mandela-like godhead

Judging Zuma. By Mark Gevisser
South Africa's likely next president is no Mandela-like godhead.
WSJ, Apr 20. 2009

Campaigning in his kwaZulu-Natal heartland this past week, Jacob Zuma took aim at one of his sharpest critics, the Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The cleric had "strayed" from his pastoral responsibilities by criticizing him, said Mr. Zuma, who has been fighting charges of fraud and racketeering for much of the past decade: "As far as I know, the role of priests is to pray for the souls of sinners, not condemn them."

The comment, coming from the man destined to be South Africa's next president, marks a watershed in the country's politics. For it is an admission by Mr. Zuma himself that South Africa's leaders are no longer the liberating godheads in the mold of Nelson Mandela. No: They are flawed and even errant human beings, "sinners" making do in an imperfect and often hostile world.

Mr. Zuma, the ruling African National Congress's candidate for president in Wednesday's general elections, was responding to comments by Mr. Tutu that he was unsuitable for the presidency. Like many other South Africans, Mr. Tutu believes the ANC leader is irrevocably compromised by the charges against him, even though they were dropped earlier this month amid findings that the chief investigator had abused the prosecutorial process.

Mr. Zuma insists that he was the victim of a political conspiracy masterminded by his predecessor and rival, former South African president Thabo Mbeki. But at the very least, Mr. Zuma was shown to have lived for a decade off the largesse of a benefactor who actually served time in jail for having solicited a bribe on his behalf.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) insists that despite the "collusion" of the chief investigator with Mr. Zuma's political enemies, the "substantive merits" of the case remain. It would have been far preferable for the matter to have been tested in court rather than prejudged by the NPA, which now stands accused of having been manipulated politically by Mr. Zuma, just as it once was by Mr. Mbeki. What makes this accusation even stronger is that the evidence of prosecutorial abuse -- a series of covert recordings -- was submitted to the authorities by Mr. Zuma himself, who could have only acquired them from the intelligence services.

Many also believe that even though Mr. Zuma was acquitted of rape charges in 2006, he showed appalling judgment by admitting to having had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman who regarded him as a "father"; by claiming that he inoculated himself against infection with a postcoital shower; and by allowing a mob of misogynist supporters to wreak havoc outside the court.

With all of the above, not to mention the fact that his finances and personal life are in perpetual shambles (he is a polygamist with several wives and around 20 children) and that he has no formal education, Mr. Zuma would seem ill-suited to the presidency of Africa's most sophisticated state and its flagship democracy.

And yet the ANC leader is likely to win Wednesday's elections with a significant majority (probably more than 60%), and has become a figure of cult popularity, particularly among the poor.

His popularity rests on several foundations. First, the century-old ANC remains "home" to most black South Africans; moving away from it would be tantamount to abandoning one's family. Second, Mr. Zuma's flawed humanity appeals greatly to ordinary people. A man of humble rural origin, he has struggled through life, and many of his supporters identify with his appetites and indiscretions. He styles himself as the purveyor of common home truths rather than the high-minded intellectualisms of his aloof predecessor. Such homeboy populism offers the impression that he is accessible and responsive, in sharp contrast to Mr. Mbeki.

Despite a significant increase in service delivery in the 15 years since the ANC came to power, most South Africans remain desperately poor and feel excluded from the banquet of victory at which a small but ostentatious new black elite now sups. Mr. Zuma himself is perceived to have been ejected from this elite by Mr. Mbeki and his cronies, because he was not sophisticated, educated or slick enough. He is the first ANC leader who does not hail from the small black professional elite. Ordinary people identify with his seeming alienation from this elite and sense, in his extraordinary ascendancy, the possibilities for their own redemption. They relate most of all to his victimhood, and they admire his ability to overcome it.

Mr. Zuma has certainly proven himself a remarkably resilient politician, even if he has earned the reputation of being all things to all people, telling shopfloor audiences one thing and their bosses another, with little indication of a coherent vision. His candidacy was dependent on the active sponsorship of the left, particularly South Africa's powerful labor movement. It remains to be seen whether he will be able to steer the middle ground between his supporters' socialist agendas and the imperatives of the market.

But there are indications that while he will not tamper much with the economic orthodoxies established by his predecessor, he might provoke a return to conservative patriarchy at odds with the liberal democratic values of the Mandela-era ANC. He has often articulated a social conservatism about matters such as teen pregnancy and homosexuality and urged faith communities to challenge those interpretations of the constitution -- such as the right to abortion -- with which they are uncomfortable.

In crime-ridden South Africa he talks tough, but in a way that suggests the easy solutions of vigilantism: He once suggested that murder and rape suspects should forfeit their rights. Recently, he indicated that he would overlook the highly regarded deputy chief justice, Dikgang Moseneke, for a promotion, because Mr. Moseneke once made a statement that he owed his allegiance to the people rather than to the ANC.

Even if he is the victim of a conspiracy, there are troubling signs in the way Mr. Zuma has handled his legal travails and appears to have manipulated the organs of state to have the charges against him dropped. Under Mr. Mbeki and now Mr. Zuma, the ANC has confused party and state to such an extent that South Africa has become a de facto one-party state. The ruling party has become seduced by its own liberation mythologies and has developed an unduly proprietary sense of ownership over South Africa's destiny (Mr. Zuma likes to talk about how it will rule until the messiah's coming). Flowing out of this is a system of patronage and kickback politics that undermines the very "developmental state" it promises to establish. For this reason, many lifelong ANC supporters, myself included, will be voting for the opposition for the first time when we go to the polls on Wednesday.

Mr. Gevisser is Writer in Residence at the University of Pretoria and the author of "A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream," just out from Palgrave Macmillan.