The South African Candidate

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This straightforward tale of triumph over oppression and poverty accounts for much of Zuma's appeal. He is plainspoken. He fought apartheid, he says, because "I was oppressed." He is just as straightforward on other subjects. He called same-sex marriages "a disgrace to the nation and to God" and boasted he used to "knock out" homosexuals as a boy. At his rape trial, he admitted having unprotected sex with his accuser, a 31-year-old woman he knew was HIV positive, and offering to marry her.

Zuma's supporters, mostly ANC voters disenchanted with their party's failure to deliver wider prosperity, gathered in their thousands outside his trial. He has the official endorsement of the ANC's powerful Youth League and the South African Communist Party, and the backing of the majority of leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). More recently, he became a figurehead for hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers who went on strike for several weeks in June and July. Strikers chanted Zuma's name at several rallies and Zuma echoed their concerns, bemoaning a "widening gap between rich and poor."

But if Zuma attracts mass support, he outrages South Africa's élite. Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu called it "inappropriate" for a presidential hopeful to have "casual sex without taking proper precautions in a country that is being devastated by this horrendous HIV/AIDS pandemic." Mbeki went further, sacking Zuma as his Deputy President in 2005 when Zuma's financial advisor was convicted of corruption related to defense contracts. More recently, Mbeki campaigned against the prospect of a Zuma presidency on the grounds that when "a member of the royal family" behaves like "a rascal … I can stand firm ... and say: 'This one cannot lead.' Whatever is said, we do not want him."

The skirmishing between the two men continued at a June party policy conference. Zuma's supporters proposed that whoever was ANC president became the party's automatic choice for country President. Mbeki's camp watered down the motion by inserting the word "preferably," leaving the way open for Mbeki to stand once again as party leader. In the run-up to the ANC's annual conference in December, at which the party will choose its new leader, another much mooted candidate is former Gauteng province premier Tokyo Sexwale. But Sexwale's success in business — he is one of South Africa's new black billionaires — may limit his support in the townships.

Zuma's appeal to party rank and file, on the other hand, cannot be discounted. At the funeral of ANC activist Adelaide Tambo in February, Mbeki said: "We may have forgotten that our movement has lived and led for as long as it has exactly because it is a movement of the people." Zuma's rivals may be more sharp-suited and sophisticated; their problem is that if any candidate for the leadership of South Africa can say he is of the people, it is Jacob Zuma.