He took the oath in front of 5,000 invited guests and crowds of supporters who had gathered at the Union Buildings in Pretoria for the ceremony. In a speech, he described it as a “moment of renewal” for South Africa, and vowed to work for reconciliation. Correspondents described a festive atmosphere in the capital that was not dampened by earlier rain and cold.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Jacob Zuma took the presidential oath Saturday and became leader of the continent’s economic powerhouse after overcoming corruption and sex scandals and a struggle for control of his party.
Zuma, the fourth president since apartheid ended 15 years ago, enjoys a popularity often compared to Nelson Mandela’s. Many impoverished black South Africans believe Zuma’s personal battles and eventual triumph give him special insight into their own struggles and aspirations.
Zuma survived corruption and sex scandals and an internal power struggle so vicious it led to a split in his African National Congress party. The ANC won last month’s parliamentary elections and Zuma was elected president by parliament on Wednesday. [ READ MORE ]
PICTURE: Jacob Zuma is sworn in as president of South Africa by Chief Justice Pius Langa (L) as former South African President Thabo Mbeki (R) and his wife Zanele look on in Pretoria May 9, 2009. Zuma was sworn in as South African president on Saturday after a remarkable political comeback and quickly highlighted the challenges he faces as Africa’s biggest economy heads towards recession.
PICTURE: Newly installed South African President Jacob Zuma (right) greets Nelson Mandela during Zuma’s inauguration at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, May 9, 2009.
[PIC]: A Zuma Supporter in Traditional Xhosa Dress Smokes A Pipe.
The Daily Mail: The 67-year-old enjoys a popularity often compared to Nelson Mandela as many impoverished black South Africans believe that his personal battles and eventual triumph give him special insight into their own struggles and aspirations.
Mr Mokoena said that while Zuma may not have had much formal education, his leadership of the ANC’s intelligence wing during the anti-apartheid struggle was proof he was smart enough to be president.
Mandela and Zuma share rural roots and an easy warmth in crowds, though Zuma’s origins are much humbler.
Mandela, 90, has ties to Xhosa tribal royalty and was groomed for leadership from an early age, attending some of the best schools and universities then open to blacks, earning a law degree.
Zuma herded cows instead of attending school as a boy, and began working as a teen to help his impoverished family. He later rose through the trade union movement and the African National Congress guerrilla force.
Jacob Zuma sworn in as S Africa leader (Coverage of Swearing In Ceremony)
Mystery surrounds spouses of polygamist president-in-waiting Zuma. With Zuma’s African National Congress party’s overwhelming victory in the parliamentary election, the first lady question is making headlines. Parliament elects South Africa’s president, putting Zuma in line for the post when the new assembly votes in May.
KWANXAMALALA, South Africa – There’s little question who will lead South Africa (after last Wednesday’s national election). The real mystery lies in who will be the country’s first lady.
As Jacob Zuma, the man preordained to be the country’s next president, voted in his rural Zulu homeland Wednesday, one of his two current wives stood to the side watching patiently as he was mobbed by cheering crowds and reporters.
But Nompumelelo Ntuli, 34, Zuma’s newest and youngest wife, was soon attracting her own crowd of admirers. Women whispered, “Isn’t she beautiful!” as Ntuli decked out in an apricot and blue tie-dye outfit beamed happily.
“Jesus is Lord!” is all she would say in response to questions.
Zuma, 67, a Zulu traditionalist and an unabashed polygamist, has married at least four women over the years. Only two are still with him: Sizakele Khumalo, whom he married in 1973, and Ntuli, who he wed last year.
PIC: ANC president Jacob Zuma’s youngest wife, Nompumelelo Ntuli, 34, after her husband
cast his ballot for general elections in the village of KwaNxamalala, South Africa, on Wednesday.
Of the other two, Kate Mantsho Zuma, committed suicide in 2000. He divorced the other, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, in 1998, although she remains a trusted aide and as the country’s foreign affairs minister is expected to join his cabinet. He is said to have more than 10 children.
Multiple wives legal
South African law recognizes such traditional marriages, though fewer and fewer younger South Africans are entering into them because they are seen as expensive and old-fashioned. It remains common among several tribes, though, including the Zulus and Swazis.
To this point, neither of his wives has played much of a public role in his life or politics.
Khumalo presides over the family compound near the school where Zuma voted in KwaNxamalala (pronounced KWAH-nxah-mah-lah-lah). She is known to be shy, and was not spotted Wednesday.
Ntuli, who uses her maiden name as is customary in polygamous marriages to differentiate among the wives, has been slightly more active outside the home. She organized a prayer meeting in southeastern South Africa earlier this year, calling for political tolerance, and established a community development foundation.
With Zuma’s African National Congress party’s overwhelming victory in the parliamentary election, the first lady question is making headlines. Parliament elects South Africa’s president, putting Zuma in line for the post when the new assembly votes in May.
Neither Zuma or the ANC have offered any answers to the question, saying the matter of his marriages is personal.
The Sunday Times newspaper in South Africa quoted Don Mkhwanazi, a trustee of the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust, as saying Zuma most likely will be guided by tradition and choose his first wife, Sizakele, to act in that capacity.
Usually unaccompanied
Zuma usually is unaccompanied at official functions. His daughter Dudzile, a staunch supporter who has been seen on the campaign trail recording his activities with a small video camera, also could be a possible official escort.
Zuma, of course, would not be the first leader in the world with more than one wife. In the Gulf, the number of a ruler’s wives and who among them is paramount are a constant source of rumors. Publicly known first ladies in Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and even Saudi Arabia do charity work and some are outspoken women’s rights’ activists ? though their pictures never appear in the newspapers.
In recent years, rulers in Dubai and in Qatar each have designated one of their wives to speak at U.S. universities and international humanitarian foundations on pressing issues concerning the Arab world and its relations with the West.
Zuma’s father, who also had multiple wives, was a policeman who died when he was a boy. His mother worked as a maid in the coastal city of Durban. He was denied a formal education and by 15 he was doing odd jobs to help support his family.
Zuma joined the ANC in 1959 and by 21 he was arrested while trying to leave the country illegally. He was jailed for 10 years on Robben Island, alongside Mandela and other heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle. In prison, Zuma resumed his schooling and began making a name for himself among ANC prisoners.
He left South Africa in 1975 for 15 years of exile in neighboring Swaziland, Mozambique and Zambia, where he was appointed chief of the ANC’s intelligence department. Following the lifting of the ANC ban in 1990, Zuma was one of the first of the group’s leaders to return to South Africa.
Khumalo stayed with him despite those long absences.
At a small market in Eshowe, a town near Zuma’s homestead, vendors selling oranges, avocados, pineapples and bananas were more interested in chorusing a long list of woes facing South Africa than the question of who would be its first lady.
After all, post-apartheid South Africa has never really had an American-style first lady in the glamorous mode of a Michelle Obama or Jackie Kennedy, or the policy-engaged model of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
One of the market vendors, Phindile Mbatha, 21, said she thought Dlamini Zuma would make a fine first lady.
Told that Jacob Zuma had divorced her some 10 years ago, Mbatha then declared that maybe the country did not need a first lady after all.
Ruling African National Congress officials predict a crushing victory. Results of the Wednesday vote are expected by Saturday at the earliest. Members of parliament will elect the president next month.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) — Votes were still being counted Friday in South Africa’s parliamentary elections, but the ruling African National Congress was already celebrating what party officials predicted will be a crushing victory.
Presumed president-to-be Jacob Zuma — an ethnic Zulu whose flamboyant style sits in contrast to more staid predecessors Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki — led a raucous rally in Johannesburg Thursday, telling thousands of cheering supporters the ANC will outstrip its goal of two-thirds control in parliament.
“The ANC will never go above 60 percent — that’s what they were saying,” Zuma said. “The counting is still continuing and I smell 70 percent.” — [ READ MORE ]
Jacob Zuma, the leader of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress, may have been left off the hook on a technicality on corruption, fraud and money laundering charges, but it would be better for him to defend himself in court to lift the cloud of allegations of corruption swirling around his head.
On Friday, South Africa’s High Court ruled the fraud and corruption charges against Zuma — the front-runner to succeed South African President Thabo Mbeki next year — were invalid because prosecutors failed to follow proper procedures. Zuma faces 16 charges of fraud, corruption and racketeering, including receiving bribes totaling $500,000 from arms dealers. Judge Chris Nicholson ruled that the National Prosecuting Authority should have consulted Zuma before it pressed corruption charges against him in 2007. Importantly, Judge Nicholson emphasized that he was not giving a verdict on whether Zuma was innocent or guilty and said prosecutors were free to bring charges again.
The increased political pressure now likely to come from Zuma’s buoyant backers and the question marks raised about the prosecuting authority’s competency over this, the second procedural lapse in the case, will make it very difficult for them to press on with charges. Nicholson’s decision in the Pietermaritzburg High Court clears a significant hurdle for Zuma, 66, to secure his party’s nomination for president in next general elections.
South African President Thabo Mbeki’s second and final terms ends next year. Such is the African National Congress’s political dominance that whoever is the party’s chosen candidate for South Africa’s presidency is assured victory.
Yet, if Zuma does not answer the allegations fully in court, the lingering questions over his involvement in alleged corruption will continue to paralyze government, erode public confidence and undermine the democracy. A new South African president will need to tackle a pervasive air of public corruption, which will demand honesty.
Judge Nicholson rightly heavily criticised Mbeki and his government for routinely abusing public institutions to launch vendettas against critics. Yet, in his campaign to quash the corruption charges against him, Zuma and his sometimes violent supporters have attacked the judiciary, democratic institutions, the media and his critics to such an extent that the country’s not yet consolidated constitutional system, institutions and values are put at risk in the same way as they were by Mbeki’s previous manipulation of them.
Jacob Zuma in Traditional Zulu Garb Zuma may be popular, but there is a considerable opposition from within the ANC against him, a populist, sexist and homophobic leader with controversial views on HIV/Aids. Zuma claimed he could see by the way a women dressed and sat that she was looking for sex and that he should oblige. Furthermore, he said that he thought having a shower after unprotected sex with an HIV positive partner would would help prevent infection. He has urged the police to shoot first and ask questions later to combat high crime levels. He is under fire from his own camp for flip-flopping on economic policy depending on the audience.
The fierce campaign to secure the presidency for Zuma and the equally stiff opposition to it has paralysed the ANC and the government in such a way that making Zuma president of South Africa will not end. Such is the enmity he evokes from those within the ANC who oppose him that his presidency is likely to be prone to log-jams, making it hard to execute policies which would benefit the country’s poor. Zuma has surrounded himself with hardline demagogues. This will make it difficult for him to bring in new talent — so necessary to energize the country — from across the color, ideological and political divides. Others fear Zuma will be held hostage by special interests and partisan factions from both the left and the right who have rallied around him.
South Africa is stuck in a number of interlocking crises: broken families, communities and society; high levels of poverty, unemployment and crime; perceptions of widespread corruption; increasing racial tensions; faltering democratic institutions; rapidly declining public confidence in government’s ability to deliver services; and looming economic problems.
The country must deal with these problems in an increasing complex, dangerous and economically treacherous world. The ANC and South Africa need a less divisive and more unifying leader, with fresh ideas, to give imaginative leadership to the country’s mountain of problems. Zuma is certainly not the answer.
William M. Gumede is Associate Editor at Africa Confidential. He is Research Fellow at the School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He recently released the bestselling book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. Close. Other articles by Mr. Gumede — Read Here
The world is increasingly divided into great beneficiaries and great casualties. The worst casualties of the divide are Africans and Black people worldwide.
To address these gross inequalities between the global North and the South, prolific Prof. Ali Mazrui has consistently advocated that the African Diaspora should include the strategy of counter-penetration.
The West through colonialism or other forms of domination once exploited black folks. It is now time for them to turn the tables and occupy positions of influence within the West itself.
The Mazruis, Chinua Achebes, Ngugi wa Thiongos, and Wole Soyinkas are classic illustrations of this strategy at work. As prominent educators in US universities, they have access to thousands of American students, a golden opportunity to sensitise America’s upcoming decision-makers to the realities and aspirations of Africa. Post-colonial Diasporans are vital to this specific assignment.
Equally critical is the role earmarked for the Diaspora of enslavement: descendants of those Africans who were transplanted to the West against their will into slavery. They are now part of Global Africa lodged in the privileged West.
Counter-penetration perspective attaches much credence to the idea of the African-American Dr. Jendayi Frazer making an on-site visitation to last year’s election related violence in Kenya and reporting her findings to her Black boss, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. After all, Frazer studied in Kenya; her doctoral dissertation was on Kenya. To her, Kenya has a human face.
In this logic, it is progressive that a Black person like Colin Powell reaches the pinnacle of American military hierarchy and then becomes the Secretary of State. Similarly, it is advancement that African-American Rice, her ideology notwithstanding, follows suit and becomes the US Secretary of State. Granted, she is not a flag-waving black activist, but her skin is black. At some point one black concern or another will touch her. How realistic is this perception?
Ten days ago, Rice, urged the US Senate to pass a law to remove the African National Congress (ANC) categorisation as a terrorist organisation from the US database. This dubious distinction was originally attained because of ANC’s activities in the struggle against apartheid. As a result of this stigma, individuals associated with the ANC still cannot obtain visas to enter the US without a special waiver by the US Secretary of State. In most cases, the mere requirement amounts to visa denial.
Rice told the Senate hearing that she found it awkward to have to personally waive visa restrictions for her South African counterpart. Additionally, it was downright embarrassing to do the same for the dignified world’s icon of peace, Nelson Mandela.
A liberal lawmaker, representative Howard Berman of California, sponsors the legislation under Senate review. His language is even more incisive. “It is shameful that the US still treats the ANC this way, based solely on its designation as a terrorist organisation by the old apartheid South African regime.”
Regarding Mandela requiring a special waiver for a US visa, his words were, “What an indignity. This legislation will wipe it all away.”
Lest we forget, this is not the first time that African Diasporans have waged a fight for South Africa within the American political system. One of the major landmarks in the demise of apartheid was the passing of the 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. The legislation was formulated and sustained by the US Congressional Black Caucus. Notably, the passage was an override to President Ronald Regan’s veto.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death. One of the most memorable acts in his life was to declare publicly his opposition to American war in Vietnam.
When asked why he risked alienating the US President Lyndon B Johnson by that action, he responded that, to him, justice was indivisible, “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”
He could not oppose racial injustice in America and turn a blind eye to injustice in Southeast Asia.
Before King, Black Americans in the American South could not vote, much less become legislators . In forty years, African-Americans have occupied virtually every position. Today, even the US presidency is up for grabs by an African-American. We have come a long way since Reverend Martin Luther King.
William M. Gumede is Associate Editor at Africa Confidential. He is Research Fellow at the School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He recently released the bestselling book 
