Campaigning in his KwaZulu-Natal heartland last week, Jacob Zuma took aim at one of his sharpest critics, the Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The cleric had "strayed" from his pastoral responsibilities by criticizing him, said Zuma, who has battled charges of fraud and racketeering for most of the last decade. "As far as I know," Zuma said, "the role of priests is to pray for the souls of sinners, not condemn them."
The comment, coming from the man who is destined to become South Africa's next president, marks a watershed in South African politics, for it is an admission by Zuma himself that the nation's leaders can no longer be expected to cast themselves in the high-minded mold of Nelson Mandela.
Zuma, the African National Congress candidate for president in Wednesday's elections, was responding to comments by Tutu that he was unsuitable for the presidency. Along with many other South Africans, Tutu believes the ANC leader has been irrevocably compromised by the charges against him, even though they were finally dropped this month amid findings that the chief investigator had abused the prosecutorial process.
Zuma insists he was the victim of a political conspiracy masterminded by his predecessor and rival, former South African President Thabo Mbeki. But at the very least, Zuma was shown to have lived for a decade off the largesse of a benefactor who served time in jail for having solicited a bribe on his behalf.
