The trials of Jacob

By Andrew Harding

South Africa's President Jacob Zuma is being replaced as leader of the ANC.

Rival and critic Cyril Ramaphosa is likely to take over as president of the country in 2019.

It will be the end of an era for President Zuma, whose rule has split South Africa down the middle.

This charming man

“Ehe... ehehehehehe... eh-he-he-hee... ahahahahayeee.”
The warm, rich, indulgent chuckle of South Africa’s President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma ripples through a solemn conference chamber in Pretoria.
It’s his trademark - a disarming, seemingly unlimited well of good humour, deployed to break the ice, lighten the mood and wrong-foot his opponents.
Many people who know him talk of Zuma’s extravagant charm.
I remember watching him gleefully bounding on to a stage, one cold night in central Johannesburg in April 2009, to celebrate the election victory that had just elevated him to the post once occupied by President Nelson Mandela. His laughter, his dance moves, his raucous singing - all seemed to promise a new era of confidence and energy for a country finally being led by “one of us” - a charismatic, salt-of-the-earth man rather than his predecessor, the elitist “professor” Thabo Mbeki.
Flawed, yes, the cheering crowds might have conceded. But aren’t we all?

“He lives up to his middle name [Gedleyihlekisa]. It’s a Zulu name that means, ‘I laugh at you as I destroy you.’”

Redi Tlhabi, writer and broadcaster

Today, after eight years as South Africa’s leader, and 10 years in charge of the governing ANC, Jacob Zuma’s laughter has turned against him. To many in this country it has become a jarring, charmless cliche - the hollow mirth of a man whose presidency is widely blamed for the corruption, misrule and economic stagnation that now afflict a nation.
“President Zuma represents a betrayal of the South African dream,” says Sipho Pitanya, a leading critic from within the ANC, the liberation movement that came to power a generation ago after the long struggle against racial apartheid.
“Zuma lives up to his middle name. It’s a Zulu name that means, ‘I laugh at you as I destroy you.’ He is brazen and reckless,” says Redi Tlhabi, author of a book about the woman who accused Zuma of rape.
And yet others argue that Zuma is a victim of outrageous prejudice, mocked for his lack of education and his rural upbringing - his genuine achievements in government overlooked by a biased “white media” in favour of a relentless focus on his personal failings.

Zuma doesn’t have to do anything for him to be disliked. The prejudice is so ingrained”

Prof Sipho Seepe

“The accusations against Zuma are clouded by suspicion, by prejudice, by conjecture... spun by a very aggressive media,” says Jessie Duarte, deputy secretary-general of the ANC and a former special assistant to Nelson Mandela.
“You have a peasant, with no university degree... Zuma doesn’t have to do anything for him to be disliked. The prejudice is so ingrained,” says the political commentator Prof Sipho Seepe, who has in the past advised the Zuma administration.

His supporters point to the successful fight against HIV/Aids and his efforts to push the government to focus more on tackling rural poverty. Under Zuma, higher education has become a priority, the civil service has expanded dramatically (for better and worse), ministries are more closely monitored, in theory at least, and a long-term National Development Plan has won support from across almost the entire political spectrum.
But which is the real Jacob Zuma?

Much of his life story is one of hardship overcome. He grew up as South Africa’s economy and society were being warped by the racist policies of a white-minority government that sought to separate, suppress and control the black majority.
Zuma’s father was a rural policeman who died when his son was five. His mother struggled to earn a living as a domestic worker in Durban, unable to give her son a formal education. As a teenager, Jacob joined the ANC, and then its underground military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe - formed to fight against the apartheid government both from within South Africa and from bases in neighbouring countries.
He was considered a “bright, very keen” recruit - uneducated but with an obvious intelligence and leadership potential.
In 1963, he was arrested by the apartheid police and sentenced to 10 years in prison on Robben Island along with Nelson Mandela and other prominent leaders in the liberation struggle. After his release he quickly resumed work in the ANC’s underground intelligence structures, mostly in exile in countries like Swaziland and Mozambique.
“A very charming person, very grounded, a man of the people, charismatic. Not as sophisticated as Thabo Mbeki, but very strategic,” remembers Colin Coleman, who met him in exile and now runs Goldman Sachs in South Africa.
But others were more wary.
Ronnie Kasrils was initially won over by that “very engaging laugh... we got on famously”. But as the two worked closely together for the ANC in Mozambique, he came to see a different side.
“Behind the facade of this simple man, he’s highly ambitious... very spiteful and even vindictive,” Kasrils - who would later become minister of intelligence in democratic South Africa - remembers thinking.
But the ANC was engaged in a deadly struggle against apartheid. Flaws and mistakes had to be overlooked until the fight was over. Finally, in 1990, Jacob Zuma returned home to take up increasingly powerful positions in a South Africa that was shedding its apartheid past and transforming into the so-called “rainbow nation”.
For Kasrils, Zuma’s true nature was now on show. “Power really reveals your character.”