'It looks very bad for Zuma'
2005-06-03 08:37
Johannesburg - The race to succeed Thabo Mbeki as president of South Africa has taken a new twist after the financial adviser to frontrunner and deputy president Jacob Zuma was convicted of corruption.
Zuma had been waging an energetic campaign within the African National Congress (ANC) to win the presidential nomination in 2007.
"It looks very bad for Zuma," said William Gumede, journalist and author of a bestselling book on the ANC, after the Durban high court on Thursday convicted businessman Schabir Shaik of corruption and fraud.
"There are five or six contenders who have all been waiting for the outcome of this trial to make a move," he said.
Shaik was found guilty of corruption and fraud for paying R1.3m to Zuma between 1995 and 2001 and for brokering a bribe from a French arms company for the deputy president.
The verdict prompted calls from the opposition for Zuma to resign while the ANC and the government both said they were studying the judgment as Zuma himself remained far from the turmoil, on an official visit to Zambia.
"He faces a crisis of confidence," said Richard Calland, analyst from the Institute for Democracy in South Africa of Zuma. "But it would be a huge mistake to conclude that he will not become the next president."
With the guilty verdict rendered, attention focused on Mbeki and the ANC leadership to see whether they would rally to Zuma's defence, as they have in the past - and on prosecutors who were considering whether Zuma should also be charged.
A plain-speaking, affable politician, Zuma has cultivated an image as the candidate of the poor and of the left wing of the ANC which feels at times sidelined by Mbeki's policies, said Gumede.
Rural KZN
"He projects himself as someone who can deal better with poverty than Mbeki, coming from rural KwaZulu-Natal," he said.
Mbeki is due to step down after his second and final term in office expires in 2009.
But the succession debate will be resolved much earlier when the ANC convenes a national convention in late 2007 to choose its candidate for the top post.
Already there have been rumblings within the ANC with the highly vocal youth league setting itself up as Zuma's cheerleader.
Other names floated as potential presidential wannabees include Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and former trade union leader Cyril Ramaphosa.
But Zuma's credentials as a veteran of the struggle against apartheid remain strong. He joined the ANC at age 17 and became a leading member of its underground structures in the early 1960s.
He served 10 years in prison on Robben Island for his opposition to apartheid and was released in 1973 when he resumed his work with the military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Zuma left South Africa in 1975 and spent the next years in exile in Swaziland, Mozambique and Zambia before returning home after the ban on the ANC was lifted in 1990.