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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, April 05, 2008 - 02:51 pm: | 
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Jacob Zuma
After Mandela
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
April 5, 2008; Page A9
Cape Town, South Africa
"That's part of the problem in Europe – to think an African is just like another African." Jacob Zuma is talking about comparisons drawn between him and Robert Mugabe, the man who turned Zimbabwe's post-colonial dream into a nightmare. Then he laughs deeply, throwing his head back.
In spite of his bad press and niggling corruption charges, Mr. Zuma is enjoying himself. He is arguably the most powerful politician in Africa and without a doubt in its richest country, South Africa. Four months ago, he ousted President Thabo Mbeki from the leadership of the dominant African National Congress. He is for all intents Mr. Mbeki's boss, and first in line to also become president when that job comes open next year.
"People have a right to describe me in whatever way," he says, "but I've not changed." This is meant to be comforting. Mr. Zuma insists the dramatic December party conference in Polokwane that elected him leader marked a natural succession. As a former deputy president of both the ANC and the country, he says he represents "continuity." Neither fervent supporters nor his many detractors are willing to accept this view.
It is almost impossible to overstate the political jolt to this country of his rise and Mr. Mbeki's fall. Africa's bellwether experiment in reconciliation, democracy and sophisticated capitalism faces as uncertain a future as at any time since apartheid ended in 1994. Possible scenarios range from the optimistic (continued progress toward a prosperous multiracial democracy) to fatalistic (slow decline brought on by corruption and neo-Marxism) to apocalyptic (Zimbabwe-style collapse).
Mr. Zuma, who is 65, is like no previous ANC leader. In a party founded by professionals, he is a polygamous Zulu with 18 (or so) children. He never received formal education, and learned to read as an adult while in jail on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and other ANC political prisoners. His hotel suite here in Cape Town looks out on the island, now a museum. "I know it well," he jokes.
He chooses his words cautiously. Pressed on policy matters, his reflex is to offer few specifics and hide behind the ANC platform, saying he has no set agenda of his own. Mr. Zuma will concede the "emphasis" will change from the Mbeki era. The first priority he mentions is rampant crime, which Mr. Mbeki doesn't like to talk about. Then come education and health, particularly the country's AIDS epidemic. Mr. Mbeki has denied the link between HIV and AIDS and hampered efforts to raise awareness and supply antiretroviral drugs. Mr. Zuma waves aside the Mbeki approach. "No, no, no, no, no," he says. "That was the views of President Mbeki."
Many people, including him, say he is less obsessed with race than the incumbent, who dropped the Mandela reconciliation schtick for pan-Africanism. "We've achieved nonracialism in South Africa," Mr. Zuma claims.
The looming end of the Mbeki presidency raises expectations of a tougher South African approach to Zimbabwe's political and economic meltdown. In power 28 years, Mr. Mugabe suffered a humiliating setback in last weekend's presidential elections, but for now looks intent to hold on, by hook or by crook. In our interview before the Zimbabwean poll, Mr. Zuma plays down any imminent change in the ANC government's approach. "Yes, we should stand up for democracy" in Africa, he says, but "our policy has been to engage, to discuss, to understand together with Zimbabweans find a solution. We can't change that stance. Those who have been condemning make the task of solving Zimbabwe's problems more difficult." He means Britain and America.
Mr. Zuma is not a Mbeki-style policy wonk or an inspirational leader in the Mandela mold. Yet he did something right to get here. He possesses evident political skills. "J.Z.," as he's widely known, is a jolly man comfortable in his own skin. Along with his strong singing voice, these qualities made him highly sought after at rallies and funerals across the country, helping build grassroots support for his remarkable political comeback last year.
His personal story also inspires. He was born and raised in a poor rural hamlet in the rolling green hills of Zululand. Joining the ANC in his youth, he spent 15 years in exile, the last few running the liberation movement's intelligence arm. Back in South Africa soon after the ban on the ANC was lifted in 1990, he was sent to his home region of KwaZulu-Natal, in the southeast, to stop the violence between rival black factions during the transition from apartheid to democracy. Tens of thousands died.
"Zuma is very tough," says Obed Mlaba, the mayor of Durban, the largest city in KwaZulu-Natal. He is a man close to his roots, still keeping a home and a couple wives in his native village of Nkandla, four hours drive from Durban. He looks at ease in tribal Zulu dress. By contrast, the professorial Mr. Mbeki, a Xhosa, never went back to his birthplace of Mbewuleni since returning from exile. "To be a Zulu is a wonderful thing," Mr. Zuma says. "The Zulus have this particular history that made me who I am."
Some Zulus think the Xhosa, who dominate the ANC, are out to get their man. Mr. Zuma dismisses any suggestion of tribal tensions inside the ruling party. But he does see conspiracies elsewhere. Only a month after he won the ANC presidency, an August date was set for the start of his long-delayed corruption trial. The timing grated. The case dates back to a big arms-procurement deal in the late 1990s. Three years ago, another court found his personal adviser, Schabir Shaik, guilty of asking for a bribe from French arms maker Thomson-CSF on Mr. Zuma's behalf. Mr. Mbeki fired him from the deputy presidency, sending J.Z. into the political wilderness. Several other ANC luminaries were also implicated in the deal. Now prosecutors are again going after Mr. Zuma.
He says he looks forward to his day in court. "I can't describe how it will end up," he says. "It's quite funny though. It's now seven years, eight years, it's unheard of somebody been investigated, taken to court all the time. It does leave a deep suspicion. . . . The manner in which the investigations were done have created great suspicion."
The pro-Zuma crowd in the ANC claims the elite, anticorruption unit investigating the deal – the Scorpions – was manipulated by President Mbeki to undermine his rival. The ANC is now moving to disband it.
The media also gets blamed for Zuma image problems. In over an hour with me, Mr. Zuma mentions the press on 15 occasions, each time dismissively. He has sued several outlets, including the well-known cartoonist Jonathan "Zapiro" Shapiro, for 60 million rand ($7.6 million).
A lot of the bad will dates back to his rape case from two years ago. In the trial, Mr. Zuma admitted to consensual unprotected sex with an HIV-positive daughter of a friend, saying he took a shower after to "cut the risk of contracting HIV." He had previously chaired South Africa's National AIDS Council. Mr. Zuma was cleared, but not his reputation. Zapiro regularly portrays him with a shower head perched above his bald pate and an "ACME chastity belt" around his midsection.
I ask if Mr. Zuma regrets the shower comment. "What did I say?" he quips. When I start to repeat the quotation, he jumps in: "That's precisely the problem of the media. How could a shower prevent HIV and AIDS. . . . They misinterpreted that. The prosecutor systematically questioned me what happened after this, then what happened thereafter, then what happened. Part of what I did was to take a shower. It was not me saying, 'Well, shower can cure AIDS.'"
At the least, the corruption case raises questions about Mr. Zuma's choice of friends and advisers. He waves them away. Of Mr. Shaik, he says, "that's a comrade whom we came with from the struggle. I don't surround myself with the wrong people. I surround myself with ANC. That's an ANC person." Mr. Shaik is serving 15 years in prison.
The country's press, particularly its influential black newspaper editors, have led attacks on Mr. Zuma's alleged lack of respect for the rule of law and independent state institutions. Barney Mthombothi in the weekly Financial Mail recently wrote that, "What's obvious is that he has the judiciary and the media – pillars of any democratic system – in his sights. The Scorpions will be the first of many casualties." Former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein's book "After the Party," a scathing exposé of the party's efforts to derail the investigation into the multibillion dollar arms deal, is flying off the shelves.
Whispers are heard that ANC power brokers, who needed him to topple Mbeki, might prefer a less tainted man to run the country next year. The name most mentioned is the party's No. 2, Kgalema Motlanthe. Mr. Zuma gives no indication of ceding his spot. Immediately after the Polokwane party conference he launched a vigorous campaign to burnish his image, ahead of the ANC's decision on who should stand for the job in parliament. With the ANC holding two-thirds of the seats, the party nominee will win. Mr. Zuma's trial likely won't end until well after, and he says that without proof of wrongdoing nobody should question his right to run for the president. If convicted, goes a joke, he can just pardon himself.
With his support from poor blacks, the trade unions and the Communist Party firm, Mr. Zuma is focusing on a small but crucial constituency: White-dominated businesses, particularly mines and banks. They vote with money. In recent months, the Zuma reassurance tour took him to meet investors in London, Houston and the last Davos conference, and regularly in South Africa. His outreach is "necessary and very natural. Why? Because I know the psychology of the investors. Naturally they are going to be worried if there was going to be a change. I thought it was necessary to come face to face with investors and explain there was going to be no change. The media in South Africa was saying, 'Zuma comes,' 'Populist,' 'We are going left,' 'Socialist is coming,' 'We are in trouble.' So it was important to clarify the issues."
Are you a socialist? "I am," he says, then a pause, then, "Hmm. It's not a simple kind of answer. . . . What I want to see is a reduction in poverty. That everyone is working. That the economy is developed to address the problems of the people. That everybody is educated."
Mr. Zuma says he wants to continue the economic dialogue with business started by Presidents Mandela and Mbeki. The party dropped Marxism for investment-friendly policies. White business may not vote for him, says Mr. Zuma, but "they run the economy." So nothing, he says, will be nationalized or brutally redistributed. He says the better hope for "empowering blacks" is "with education, with skills, with opportunities."
People who know him say his alliance with the ANC's hard left was merely convenient during the leadership bid. The presence of black businessmen in his inner circle and an innate Zulu conservatism, they add, will temper him. Sandile Zunga, an investor from KwaZulu-Natal who is close to Mr. Zuma, compares the new ANC leader to Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a trade unionist and populist who moderated his socialist views once in office.
When I mention to Helen Zille, the Cape Town mayor and leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance party, that big business seems to be warming up to Mr. Zuma, she fires back, "I'm sure they like him. Zuma wants to be bought."
Mr. Zuma invokes strong traditions of the ANC to blunt concerns that his country will follow its neighbors into misrule and decline. And he proudly notes that he has just strengthened democracy inside the ANC and South Africa. So why, his supporters complain, is he now seen as a threat to it? Mr. Mbeki overstayed his welcome by looking for a third term atop the ANC to be able to handpick his successor. Mr. Zuma's successful challenge made history. "It's the first time, particularly on the continent of Africa, where the membership of an organization vote out a sitting president," he says. "It's not easy in other places. Can't touch it. But that tells you the depth, the maturity, the understanding of democratic principles by the ANC."
At the Polokwane conference, the ANC adopted a two-term limit for its president. The 1994 national constitution already imposes the same limit on the head of state, which sets South Africa apart on the continent. "You've got to have leaders who don't stay too much," Mr. Zuma says. "Ten years is enough. Beyond 10 years politicians begin to personalize everything and there begin to have problems." It's a spot-on diagnosis of postcolonial Africa's political cancer that the country he presumes to lead has, so far, been spared.
Mr. Kaminski is editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe.
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