Zuma Is Chosen to Lead A.N.C.; Resounding Defeat for Mbeki

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/world/africa/19anc.html
The New York Times - Dec 19, 2007

Zuma Is Chosen to Lead A.N.C.

By Michael Wines

Polokwane, South Africa - The African National Congress chose the Zulu
politician Jacob G. Zuma as its new leader on Tuesday, handing South
Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, a resounding defeat.

After three days of furious politicking at a national conference here,
the A.N.C.'s 3,900 delegates voted to oust Mr. Mbeki as leader of the
party and award the job to Mr. Zuma, whose popularity has surged
despite facing corruption and rape charges last year.

Mr. Mbeki, who led the party for 10 years and the nation for more than
8, won fewer than 4 in 10 votes.

Mr. Zuma now becomes the prohibitive favorite to succeed Mr. Mbeki as
president when Mr. Mbeki's second term ends in early 2009. But he faces
at least one daunting hurdle: a continuing corruption investigation
that has dogged him for much of this decade and seems likely to lead to
another round of criminal charges soon.

If Mr. Zuma were charged and convicted, he would be ineligible for the
national presidency under South Africa's Constitution. The mere filing
of new charges would be likely to set off a long stretch of political
turmoil until the case against him was resolved.

Neither that prospect nor Mr. Zuma's considerable other political
baggage - the unsuccessful rape prosecution and the conviction of a
Durban businessman on charges of bribing Mr. Zuma when he was deputy
president - stopped the party's delegates from electing him and his
slate of senior A.N.C. candidates.

The announcement of the vote caused pandemonium at the conference, held
in a vast white tent at the University of Limpopo under a constant
summer drizzle.

The mood of Mr. Zuma's supporters was captured in a single gesture by
much of the crowd - two hands, rotating over each other like bicycle
pedals. Soccer coaches use it to signal players to leave the field for
a substitute, and thousands of delegates directed it at Mr. Mbeki
throughout the conference.

Mr. Mbeki, a skilled technocrat, has run South Africa's government and
economy with admirable efficiency, analysts and politicians say. But he
was accused of shutting lower party officials out of decision making,
being intolerant of dissent and - most seriously - ignoring the party's
powerful left wing, which wants more money and attention given to the
nation's vast underclass and the working poor.

An alliance of left-leaning trade unions, Communists and the rural poor
made Mr. Zuma its standard-bearer, and it surprised many by scooping up
the support of delegates even in regions under Mr. Mbeki's nominal
control.

"People are sick and tired," Sipho Seepe, a political analyst,
columnist and Mbeki critic. "They're saying 'no' to this fellow. They
have to send a clear and unambiguous message."

The message to Mr. Mbeki may have been unmistakable, but Mr. Zuma's own
plans for South Africa remain opaque. What little he has said and done
has been ambiguous.

Alternately charming and prickly, comfortable in a tailored suit or
tribal dress, Mr. Zuma is arguably South Africa's most adept
politician. In eastern South Africa, where he helped broker an end to
guerrilla war in the early 1990s, he is idolized by his fellow Zulus,
but he is well-liked among other ethnic groups as well.

Mr. Zuma has built a reputation as a populist and a champion of the poor
against an unfeeling government - fertile political soil in a nation
with at least 25 percent unemployment and a yawning wealth gap.

But as the scholar and political analyst Xolela Mangcu said in a June
speech, "There is nothing about his public actions that suggests he is a
populist, that he would return power to the poor."

A moderate while in Mr. Mbeki's government, Mr. Zuma tied his quiet
campaigning for the A.N.C. leadership to the South African political
left, which has called for the renationalization of basic industries and
guaranteed incomes for the poor.

Nevertheless, Mr. Zuma met privately in recent weeks with foreign
investors in the United States and Britain, apparently to assure them
that South Africa's economy would not become another Bolivia under his
rule.

Mr. Zuma has carefully sidestepped any direct criticism of Mr. Mbeki,
who dismissed him as deputy president in 2005 as corruption allegations
against him gained credence.

One veteran analyst of South African politics, Steven Friedman, said
Tuesday that critics who were casting Mr. Zuma's populist rhetoric as a
sign of radical change were mistaken.

"The guy is personally problematic, and he has a lot of questions to
answer," Mr. Friedman said. "But this is a mainstream figure who was a
bosom buddy and close confidante of Thabo Mbeki. He's not some wild man
coming in from the hills to destroy the palace."

[Sharon Lafraniere contributed reporting from Johannesburg.]
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