Soccer fans around the world are tuning in to South Africa as the country prepares to host the 2010 World Cup.
For most Americans, the World Cup isn’t much of draw, but all the media attention has put a new focus on the country’s recently-elected President. The sometimes eccentric Jacob Zuma who’s been known to dance in Zulu garb and sing “Bring me my machine gun!” at political rallies was profiled this week by Time Magazine after giving a rare interview. He also made headlines on AIDS Day for his speech that set a new direction for South Africa’s fight against the disease.
But to most people abroad, Zuma is still known for a string of shameful trials that highlighted two of the nation’s biggest scourges: corruption and crime.
In 2005 he was investigated for corruption because of an arms deal by a financial associate, and then later that year was accused of raping the daughter of a fellow ANC party member. Since his election in April 2009, elites in South Africa and many Westerners have criticized his heavy-handed policies and his less than exemplary human rights record. He has outraged activists for failing to condemn his predecessor Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS “denialism” and for reminiscing that he used to beat-up homosexuals.
His slow response to Mugabe’s land grabs and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe made whites and investors nervous when he took office. And since calling for zero-tolerance on crime in September, the media has blamed him for the spread of a ‘shoot to kill’ approach among police: heads turned in Zuma’s direction when an infant was killed this past month because police thought it was holding a gun.
But it’s this very heavy-handedness, coupled with what’s seen as a ‘practical’ approach to Western standards that leads many South Africans to support their President.
In a country with over 50 murders per day, often related to petty crime, Zuma is praised for helping to bring stability. On Mugabe, the situation is delicate: while he’s condemned by the West, the aging leader remains a hero to many Africans – there are streets named after him in capitals from Namibia to Mozambique.
Zuma has been tasked with brokering talks between Mugabe and the opposition, and has quietly gone about bringing them together. He has a reputation as a negotiator from his days bringing peace to the Kwazulu-Natal region in the mid-90’s; internally, he’s used these skills to bring his own opposition into key roles.
As one ANC party member gushed to American Maggie, “Zuma is a team player, he never uses ‘I’ only ‘We’, and he always says ‘South Africa is bigger than all of us.’” This loyalty leads many to explain away his trials as merely party politics: controversially, supporters often point to the rape victim’s known HIV-positive status as proof that the charge was a political ploy. As for the corruption case, it’s brushed off as “natural” in a culture where apparently “you can’t accuse one person without also citing the top”.
All this support shows in the polls: Zuma’s approval ratings have increased since he took office reaching around 57% at his 100-day mark. And he’s managed to improve his appeal in each ethnic group: blacks, whites, “coloureds” and Indians.
With all this, what else is on Zuma’s agenda? At last week’s ANC rally, the priorities were clear: education, fighting crime, repairing the healthcare system, HIV/AIDS, and poverty alleviation. There’s also foreign policy: Zuma continues to extend his friendship to the US, which just gave South Africa another $12million to fight AIDS, in addition to more than $1 billion in aid given under Bush. Although Thabo Mbeki criticized him for pandering to the West, and asked “why beg Obama and Gordon Brown when we have China around the corner?”, Zuma hasn’t neglected China either. He plans on a state visit to Beijing in 2010 to strengthen economic ties.
There’s a clear strategy of positioning South Africa within the rising China-India-Brazil axis. Added to all this is the pressure of prominent international posts for the country: South African Kumi Naidoo was put at the helm of Greenpeace this November, and called on Zuma to come to Copenhagen help “shame developed-country leaders into action” on global warming.
Zuma’s plate is certainly full, but “The Negotiator” seems up for the challenge.
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Christine Nikol writes from London, UK where she works as a business consultant. She has previously written for The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. and as an intern for the Paris office of Newsweek. She has a Masters in English Literature from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in Government from Harvard College, where she was Editor in Chief of the Harvard French Review, an annual journal of transatlantic politics and culture. She is originally from Poland and Canada and has also lived in France, Nepal, and Singapore, but America is by far her favorite.
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