If even some of the more modest predictions about Jacob Zuma's rise to power had been correct, South Africa would be an empty, corrupt dictatorship by now. Back in 2006, South African memoirist Rian Malan ended his dismal assessment of the nation's prospects ("Not civil war, but sad decay") in British magazine the Spectator by asking: "Anyone want a house here?" A year ago, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said he was "deeply saddened" when Zuma staged a party coup against his predecessor Thabo Mbeki, "deeply disturbed" that both had used institutions of state in their struggle and warned that path "leads to a banana republic." This February, Afrikaner author André Brink published a memoir in which he described the "disillusionment, resentment, and rage tinged with despair" over the "rottenness" in South Africa.
Political dialogue tends to the maximalist in a country that until recently saw things in black and white. But at the heart of the hysteria about Zuma was genuine concern about whether a man who had faced trial for both rape (he was acquitted) and corruption (the charges were dropped) was fit for office. So many African liberation movements have gone from triumph to tyranny, hope to corruption. Even with the saintly figure of former leader Nelson Mandela in the wings, would Zuma and his party, the African National Congress (ANC), do the same?
But since his election in April, President Zuma has surprised. Seven months is not long enough to fix South Africa's problems — and Zuma hasn't. Violent crime, a yawning inequality which juxtaposes black millionaires with millions scraping by on less than $2 a day and the world's largest HIV/AIDS population continue to drag on the country. But whereas Mbeki stoked a national mood of frustration by denying such crises existed, Zuma concedes they are real and even accepts blame. "These challenges are based in reality," the 67-year-old told TIME in a rare interview. "And it's only when you admit there have been deficiencies and weaknesses that you make sense to the people, who can see them for themselves. After 15 years [in power], people are saying: Where is the delivery?"
Zuma agrees too that the ANC is in crisis, alienated from its people by power and riches. "The success of liberation ... tests the clarity" of even the best African revolutionaries, he says. "Many liberation movements have turned into something else and abandoned what they were. The ANC came to that point ... where we might have fallen." The fix, he says, is in "renewal ... paying attention to [the ANC's] principles [but] talking about ... how we have to do things differently." A presidential adviser underlines the new tone. "The big difference today is that now we have a leadership that says, 'Guys — we've got big problems,'" he says. "Because the truth is, we can't afford another 15 years like this."
Some of that talk is being matched by action. In his new government, Zuma began by promoting the good and sacking the bad. The well-regarded former tax commissioner, Pravin Gordhan, became Finance Minister. Barbara Hogan — who as Health Minister ended years of South Africa's attachment to what the U.N. called the "lunatic fringe" of the AIDS world — took Public Enterprise. Zuma fired Hogan's predecessor at health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who recommended beetroot, garlic, lemon juice and potatoes to treat HIV and AIDS, and former police chief Jackie Selebi, who is charged with corruption.
The President has also expanded accountability. That's necessary, he says, because with the ANC consistently winning around 65% at the polls, elections are not much of a check on the party. "We are too strong. Such support and power can intoxicate the party and lead you into believing that you know it all. You take things for granted. [The party] ends up unwieldy and in a mess." So Zuma appointed a close adviser, Collins Chabane, to a new ministry inside the presidency to monitor performance. He set up a planning commission, also inside the presidency, to enforce a consistent long- term vision across government departments, with Trevor Manuel, South Africa's respected Finance Minister since 1996, at its head. Efforts are also being made to reach out to ordinary South Africans. New Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale has spent nights in poor townships across the country to hear residents' concerns. Zuma himself has established a hotline to the presidency and in August gathered hundreds of school principals in Durban to answer their questions on reform. The same month, in the first of what he promises will be a series of surprise presidential inspections, he caught the mayor of the northern town of Balfour playing hooky.
Zuma's most public test will come next June, when South Africa stages the football World Cup — whose expected 500,000 fans will deliver an unprecedented challenge to his government's ability to deliver on security, transport and infrastructure upgrades. Zuma has also set himself other ambitious targets against which the South African public can judge him. In his state of the nation address in June, the new President promised half a million public-works jobs by the end of this year and 4 million by 2014; universal primary education and 95% enrolment in secondary schools by 2014; a 50% cut in new HIV infections and 80% coverage of antiretroviral treatment drugs by 2011; and a 7% to 10% annual cut in serious and violent crime. In September, in what was widely interpreted as the inauguration of a shoot-to-kill policy for police, Zuma said: "Once a criminal takes out their gun ... police must then act. We must apply extraordinary measures." His aim, he says, is to create "a system that keeps you on your toes ... to monitor [yourself] vigorously. If there are nonperformers, we'll take them out." Zuma's biographer, Jeremy Gordin, says no one expected Zuma to "hit the ground running, and so hard. He seems to be completely sincere. He wants to deliver."
So will he? Could Zuma be the leader South Africa has been waiting for?
"I Am a Zulu" Zuma's antiapartheid "struggle" credentials are impeccable. Between 1963 and '73 he was locked up on Robben Island, where Mandela spent most of his 27 years in jail. If it is the later years on his résumé that outrage South Africa's élite — the court cases, the damaging fight with Mbeki, the three wives and 18 children — it is his early activism that makes him a natural champion for the poor.
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma was born in April 1942 in the dirt-poor town of Nkandla among the deep gorges and steep ridges of the Zulu heartland in the southeastern province of what is now called KwaZulu-Natal. Unemployment in South Africa hovers at around 40% but in Nkandla it is 90%. Tarred roads, electricity and running water are a novelty if they exist at all, a quarter of the population is infected with HIV and only 3% graduate from high school. Though he grew up before AIDS, bad health was rife — his father, a policeman, died when he was 3. His mother was a domestic servant for a white family and Zuma dropped out of school to work on his uncle's farm and as a kitchen boy.
Read TIME's Q&A with Zuma.
See five reasons to look forward to the 2010 World Cup.
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Seat of power The South African President faces his critics
If even some of the more modest predictions about Jacob Zuma's rise to power had been correct, South Africa would be an empty, corrupt dictatorship by now. Back in 2006, South African memoirist Rian Malan ended his dismal assessment of the nation's prospects ("Not civil war, but sad decay") in British magazine the Spectator by asking: "Anyone want a house here?" A year ago, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said he was "deeply saddened" when Zuma staged a party coup against his predecessor Thabo Mbeki, "deeply disturbed" that both had used institutions of state in their struggle and warned that path "leads to a banana republic." This February, Afrikaner author André Brink published a memoir in which he described the "disillusionment, resentment, and rage tinged with despair" over the "rottenness" in South Africa.
Political dialogue tends to the maximalist in a country that until recently saw things in black and white. But at the heart of the hysteria about Zuma was genuine concern about whether a man who had faced trial for both rape (he was acquitted) and corruption (the charges were dropped) was fit for office. So many African liberation movements have gone from triumph to tyranny, hope to corruption. Even with the saintly figure of former leader Nelson Mandela in the wings, would Zuma and his party, the African National Congress (ANC), do the same? (See pictures of South Africa after 15 years of ANC rule.)
But since his election in April, President Zuma has surprised. Seven months is not long enough to fix South Africa's problems — and Zuma hasn't. Violent crime, a yawning inequality which juxtaposes black millionaires with millions scraping by on less than $2 a day and the world's largest HIV/AIDS population continue to drag on the country. But whereas Mbeki stoked a national mood of frustration by denying such crises existed, Zuma concedes they are real and even accepts blame. "These challenges are based in reality," the 67-year-old told TIME in a rare interview. "And it's only when you admit there have been deficiencies and weaknesses that you make sense to the people, who can see them for themselves. After 15 years [in power], people are saying: Where is the delivery?"
Zuma agrees too that the ANC is in crisis, alienated from its people by power and riches. "The success of liberation ... tests the clarity" of even the best African revolutionaries, he says. "Many liberation movements have turned into something else and abandoned what they were. The ANC came to that point ... where we might have fallen." The fix, he says, is in "renewal ... paying attention to [the ANC's] principles [but] talking about ... how we have to do things differently." A presidential adviser underlines the new tone. "The big difference today is that now we have a leadership that says, 'Guys — we've got big problems,'" he says. "Because the truth is, we can't afford another 15 years like this." (See pictures of Johannesburg's preparations for soccer's World Cup.)
Some of that talk is being matched by action. In his new government, Zuma began by promoting the good and sacking the bad. The well-regarded former tax commissioner, Pravin Gordhan, became Finance Minister. Barbara Hogan — who as Health Minister ended years of South Africa's attachment to what the U.N. called the "lunatic fringe" of the AIDS world — took Public Enterprise. Zuma fired Hogan's predecessor at health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who recommended beetroot, garlic, lemon juice and potatoes to treat HIV and AIDS, and former police chief Jackie Selebi, who is charged with corruption.
The President has also expanded accountability. That's necessary, he says, because with the ANC consistently winning around 65% at the polls, elections are not much of a check on the party. "We are too strong. Such support and power can intoxicate the party and lead you into believing that you know it all. You take things for granted. [The party] ends up unwieldy and in a mess." So Zuma appointed a close adviser, Collins Chabane, to a new ministry inside the presidency to monitor performance. He set up a planning commission, also inside the presidency, to enforce a consistent long- term vision across government departments, with Trevor Manuel, South Africa's respected Finance Minister since 1996, at its head. Efforts are also being made to reach out to ordinary South Africans. New Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale has spent nights in poor townships across the country to hear residents' concerns. Zuma himself has established a hotline to the presidency and in August gathered hundreds of school principals in Durban to answer their questions on reform. The same month, in the first of what he promises will be a series of surprise presidential inspections, he caught the mayor of the northern town of Balfour playing hooky. (See Jacob Zuma's profile in the 2008 TIME 100.)
Zuma's most public test will come next June, when South Africa stages the football World Cup — whose expected 500,000 fans will deliver an unprecedented challenge to his government's ability to deliver on security, transport and infrastructure upgrades. Zuma has also set himself other ambitious targets against which the South African public can judge him. In his state of the nation address in June, the new President promised half a million public-works jobs by the end of this year and 4 million by 2014; universal primary education and 95% enrolment in secondary schools by 2014; a 50% cut in new HIV infections and 80% coverage of antiretroviral treatment drugs by 2011; and a 7% to 10% annual cut in serious and violent crime. In September, in what was widely interpreted as the inauguration of a shoot-to-kill policy for police, Zuma said: "Once a criminal takes out their gun ... police must then act. We must apply extraordinary measures." His aim, he says, is to create "a system that keeps you on your toes ... to monitor [yourself] vigorously. If there are nonperformers, we'll take them out." Zuma's biographer, Jeremy Gordin, says no one expected Zuma to "hit the ground running, and so hard. He seems to be completely sincere. He wants to deliver."
So will he? Could Zuma be the leader South Africa has been waiting for?
"I Am a Zulu" Zuma's antiapartheid "struggle" credentials are impeccable. Between 1963 and '73 he was locked up on Robben Island, where Mandela spent most of his 27 years in jail. If it is the later years on his résumé that outrage South Africa's élite — the court cases, the damaging fight with Mbeki, the three wives and 18 children — it is his early activism that makes him a natural champion for the poor.
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma was born in April 1942 in the dirt-poor town of Nkandla among the deep gorges and steep ridges of the Zulu heartland in the southeastern province of what is now called KwaZulu-Natal. Unemployment in South Africa hovers at around 40% but in Nkandla it is 90%. Tarred roads, electricity and running water are a novelty if they exist at all, a quarter of the population is infected with HIV and only 3% graduate from high school. Though he grew up before AIDS, bad health was rife — his father, a policeman, died when he was 3. His mother was a domestic servant for a white family and Zuma dropped out of school to work on his uncle's farm and as a kitchen boy.
Read TIME's Q&A with Zuma.
See five reasons to look forward to the 2010 World Cup.
POWERED BY digg
Seat of power The South African President faces his critics
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