Mafarana Gogos FC — are the footballing grannies of a remote village in the backwoods of Nkowankowa in Limpopo Province. Coach Sam Zulu says that many of the team members used to walk with sticks before the team started, but have now thrown them away and can run 200 metres without resting.

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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)

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By: Okech Kendo

   Okech Kendo
Post-apartheid South Africa’s next president is certain to be an unlikely occupant of the office. And not just because Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, also known by his clan name Msholozi, lacks the stature or polish of Nelson Mandela, or the intellectual deceit and accomplishments of Thabo Mbeki.

Zuma falls much below their moral and intellectual par, yet he is ahead of many. This is probably because of coincidence or too frequently being underestimated because of his dismal formal education. The Zulu Boy – and Zuma is a child of that flamboyant, masculine and military community – counts Shaka, the empire destroyer, among his ancestors, if only through ethnic affinity. Indeed, a Zulu was always coming to be president of independent South Africa, given their numerical strength in the tribe-and-race-defined country.

But few would imagine the inheritor would be Zuma, in an age when the influence of western education is dominant. Zuma often thinks less of himself, almost in a self-deprecatory way, sometimes to spite others who think they are highbred.

While in South Africa early this month, I entered a bookshop at Oliver Tambo Airport in Johannesburg to buy a book I could not find in Nairobi. Michaela Wrong’s John Githongo-inspired It is Our Turn To Eat was priced at 270 Rand (about Sh2,700), so I picked a copy of Jeremy Gordin’s Zuma: A Biography instead.

A woman at the counter was baffled with my selection and my remark I wanted to read about “the next president of South Africa.” It was obvious she and her kind would stop a Zuma presidency if they could.

   Jacob Zuma, Left With Zulu Elders

Even with a history of sexual adventurism, a high profile case of like nature, and other related moral questions about the Zulu Boy, Zuma’s presidential stream is unstoppable. The majority of those who matter in a democracy are with him, so no rich Afrikaan racists can stop him. Not even the wealthy, powerful elite of his mentor Mbeki can stop him.

Minor river

Asked why he was not popular with writers, Zuma told Gordin: “Why should anyone write about me? I’m not an important person. I’m not from a politically famous or royal family. I am not an influential businessman. I’m just an ordinary person.”

Mandela is from a royal Xhosa family. Thabo Mbeki, his successor, is from a political family, son of Govan Mbeki, an ANC founder member. One of Zuma’s possible rivals in future is Cyril Ramaphosa, an ANC insider and successful entrepreneur who might have succeeded Mandela. (Ramaphosa, by the way, is the negotiator PNU rejected last year, claiming he could not assist Dr Kofi Annan because he is close to ODM leader Raila Odinga.)

In Khrushchev: The Man, His Era, William Taubman echoes the Zuma narrative, particularly his relationship with Mbeki.

The story goes: “‘Once upon a time,’ (Nikita) Khrushchev said, ‘there were three men in a prison: A social democrat, an anarchist and a humble little Jew – a half-educated fellow named Pinya. They decided to elect a cell leader to watch over the distribution of food, tea and tobacco.

“The anarchist, a big burly fellow, was against electing authority. To show his contempt for law and order, he proposed that the semi-educated Jew be elected.

“Things went well until they decided to escape. They realised that the first man to go through the tunnel would be shot at by the guard. They all turned to the big brave anarchist. But he was afraid to go.

Suddenly, poor little Pinya drew himself up and said: ‘Comrades, you elected me by a democratic process as your leader. Therefore, I will go first’.”

The moral: However humble a man’s beginning, he achieves the stature of the office to which he is elected. Pinya could be Zuma, the son of a KwaZulu Natal policeman and a maid. He never had formal education. The brutality of his boyhood saw him take up casual labour in Boer homes. His father died before Zuma, barely a baby, understood the cruelty around him. The brutality shaped his boyhood, and would lead him to detention in Robben Island for ten years.

His wedding with the ANC is the subject of legend. He enlisted at age 17. In 1991, when ANC was looking for someone to lead the party in talks with FW De Clerk’s National Party and Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party, it was a gesture from ANC president Oliver Tambo that did it. Tired and sick then, Tambo was seen to have pointed his stick at Zuma and no one wanted to contradict him.

When Mbeki picked Zuma as deputy president, he underrated his worth. He figured that Zuma would have no ambition for the highest office. How wrong he was: Zulu Boy is in after he ejected Mbeki from ANC!

Analysis — South Africa Elections

The Splintering Rainbow

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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.

Jacob Zuma — Interview

South Africans divided over Zuma

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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.

   Jacob Zuma In Traditional Zulu Regalia

“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 ]

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