Jacob Zuma for President: Jeltsin reincarnated?

The nominations for the leadership of the African National Congress are on. Within two weeks, the nation and the world will know who will lead the majority party in parliament. More important, this person is most likely to become the next president of the Republic of South Africa after the elections in 2008. It is fair to say that there is a lot at stake.

The scope for suspense would have been less were it not for the dubious list of nominees. For one, the current leader of the party, President Mbeki, cannot stand again for president of the country at the end of his current term. The constitution prohibits him from doing so, even if he would be re-elected as the leader of his party. And all signs are that he will be running for leader of the party, since he accepted the party's nomination earlier today. But Mr. Mbeki is at the end of both his tenure and his political yarn. His leadership of the party while not president of the country would lead to all sorts of contentious clashes.

But there is more cause for concern. The most likely candidate at this stage to become the next president of South Africa is the controversial Mr. Jacob Zuma. Now here is a man of the people - a truly populist leader. He has little formal education, comes from a poor background and appeals to the poor masses of which South Africa has many on the voters lists across the country. But he is also a man with a record.

In 2005 a case of fraud against Mr. Zuma was struck from the court roll but by then he had been dismissed already as Deputy President of South Africa. By 2006, another case against Mr. Zuma, this time of rape, was decided in his favour by the court. More damaging were the evidence brought before the court by Mr. Zuma during his defence. In particular, he came across as chauvinist; of questionable moral standards and entirely not well informed or educated.

Quite frankly, Mr. Zuma does not strike the figure of a typical, well-groomed presidential candidate in a modern, largely westernised country. Rather, Mr. Zuma comes across very much a man in the Boris Yeltsin mould. And as we know from history, under Yeltsin, Russia fell apart, was being ransacked by unscrupulous oligarchs and came to the brink of bankruptcy.

One dearly hopes that the same lot that befell Russia in the 1990's is not in stock for South Africa over the next five to ten years, which will be the maximum tenure of the next president of South Africa.