Rainbow nation is in for a storm

Thirteen years after the end of apartheid, the "rainbow nation is threatened with a very nasty storm", says Richard Dowden in The Times.

The flamboyant and controversial populist Jacob Zuma has swept to power as the leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress, two years after the incumbent Thabo Mbeki fired him from his post as deputy president when his financial adviser was convicted of fraud.

Zuma's victory (he polled 2,329 votes against Mbeki's 1,505 among delegates at the ANC's national conference) puts him in line to become the next president of South Africa when Mbeki's term expires in 2009.

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The courts may yet prevent this, says Sebastien Berger in The Daily Telegraph. Sixty-year-old Zuma "could not be a more controversial figure". He was acquitted of raping an HIV-positive woman last year (he told the court that he did not use a condom and showered afterwards to prevent infection) and faces investigations for corruption and tax evasion. His opponents will now redouble their efforts to bring him to trial as a conviction would bar him from becoming head of state.

Indeed, says Basildon Peta in The Independent and a "defiant" Zuma has already vowed not to resign as ANC leader if he is re-charged. This raises fears that South Africa could be "plunged into instability and violence" if the charges resurface.

Even if they don't, the country will have a "significant PR problem" with Zuma as president-in-waiting, says Gideon Rachman on FT.com. It is bigger, richer and more sophisticated than other African countries, and has a proper legal system, good infrastructure and world-class companies.

Now it stands to be led by a man whose career so far "plays into every stereotype of the feckless African leader". Perhaps it is a bit "literal-minded, but I do not find it reassuring that Jacob Zuma's signature anthem' translates as Bring me my machine gun'".

The sight of 4,000 delegates singing that song on Sunday night in support of Zuma was a "brutal" reminder of just how unpopular Mbeki has become, says The Guardian. People have grown tired of his arrogance and the way he paid lip service to democracy while centralising power and surrounding himself with loyalists. His free-market policies enriched a few blacks but left millions out in the cold.

Officially, unemployment is 25%, but is probably nearer 38%. The poor see Zuma as their salvation, says Berger. He has backing from trade unions and the South African Communist Party. Zuma may talk left, but he'll walk right, says Mike Cohen in the International Herald Tribune.

Given the country's need to fund its current-account deficit and to attract foreign investment, he will have "little scope to deviate from the economic path Mbeki has forged". Mbeki may have neglected the poor and adopted a shamefully passive attitude to Mugabe, but he has overseen an economic boom.

The architect of the boom was finance minister Trevor Manuel, says Dowden, and Zuma's relations with him are not good. But for all his left-wing rhetoric, Zuma is no socialist. "He may try, in a sleazy way, to make friends with South Africa's big companies and the multi-nationals, getting favours and giving them contracts" and he will have to "repay the trade unions for their support".

But the real worry is what happens in the next 18 months. If Zuma is charged with corruption, it can only provoke a "drastic reaction from his supporters", which may result in a "fatal split" within the ANC. By the time South Africans vote for their new President in 2009, this battle will have grown from "angry words in the conference hall to violence on the streets".