Next week, South Africans will vote in a tightly contested general election that could see the ruling African National Congress (ANC) lose its parliamentary majority after 30 years in power. As campaigning has ramped up in the past few weeks, the man to watch has been Jacob Zuma, the country’s divisive former president.
Though Zuma remains a member of the ruling party that he once led, he has formed a new political party called uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP)—named after the ANC’s armed wing during the anti-apartheid struggle. Despite a Constitutional Court order earlier this week banning him from running, Zuma has been actively campaigning for months as the new party’s leader. Polls suggest that MKP could win up to 15 percent of the national vote.
If the ANC doesn’t secure the majority that it needs to govern alone, Zuma could play a vital role in determining the future of the country, proving—as he has many times before—that he is not to be underestimated. Love him or hate him, Zuma is the most consequential South African politician of his generation.
With the coming election, South Africa is preparing to enter a new phase of its democracy. The ANC is in decline, which means that even if it holds on to its majority, it will emerge from the political contest battered and bruised. Over the past decade, the party has hemorrhaged support. Voters who once respected the party leaders now indicate that they no longer trust the ANC, or democracy in general. In addition, high numbers of young people report that they are unwilling to vote or participate in the democratic process because they see no point.
As they buckle under the weight of unfulfilled expectations, South Africans are entering a post-Nelson Mandela era in which the lofty principles laid down by the architects of the new dispensation now ring hollow.
The constitution, which was once a hallowed document, is derided by young people who say they “can’t eat the constitution.” For those who struggle with unemployment and poor educational outcomes, Mandela’s political compromises seem like betrayals. These critiques are important. Indeed, Pretoria-based law professor Joel Modiri has written that the constitutional order was merely “a historical opening for the reimagining of a new social order.”
The ANC has failed to provide leadership in relation to what that new order might look like, as have the many opposition parties that are competing in the elections. While the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party speaks about changing the economic status quo, it has failed to convert early interest from young people into the kind of political momentum that will lead to electoral wins. In addition, polling shows that the EFF may be suffering from MKP’s entry into the political market.
Zuma’s establishment of the MKP has proven canny. He and his comrades in the MKP seem unfazed by the recent Constitutional Court ruling, which barred the former president from running as a political candidate because of a 2021 conviction for contempt of court. An MKP spokesperson has announced that the former president’s name won’t be on the ballot, but a picture of his face will appear alongside his party’s logo.
And Zuma’s face is MKP’s biggest political asset. Indeed, in the new brand of shadow politics that Zuma has come to define, he doesn’t need to sit in Parliament to influence political decisions. In some ways, Zuma has learned that the best way to evade the institutions of governance is to avoid them completely.
Members of the Gupta family—an influential Indian family that used their friendship with Zuma to amass billions of dollars in state contracts and influence cabinet appointments—were nonstate actors who exercised extreme political power in an extralegal manner. Similarly, Zuma may find himself as a private citizen, directing the activities of MKP members—including his daughter Duduzile Zuma Sambudla—who are likely to secure seats in Parliament.
The model for how to lead a government from shadowy backrooms isn’t new—or confined to South Africa. In Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski had no official government role for most of the eight-year reign of his Law and Justice party from 2015 to 2023, yet no one was in any doubt about his control of the party.
As usual, Zuma has his eyes on the endgame. MKP will take voters away from the ANC, especially in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal, where he has typically played an important role in mobilizing rural support during campaigning. His presence is already being felt. The most recent KwaZulu-Natal polls project that the MKP will win the province with as much as a 46 percent share of the vote.
The Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)—usually a popular party in the province—is polling at just 14.5 percent, the centrist Democratic Alliance follows at 12 percent, and the ANC is slated to win only 11 percent. There is no question that the ANC’s traditional voting base has followed Zuma; in the last national election, held in 2019, the ANC won 55 percent of the vote in KwaZulu-Natal. Even if the polls aren’t precise, the trend is deeply worrying for the ruling party.
What is especially frustrating for ANC leaders is the fact that Zuma’s reasons for starting a new party seem personally motivated. Zuma has said he wants the country to get back on track and thinks that the ANC has “lost its way.”
But Oyama Mabandla, the author of the Soul of a Nation, disagrees. Mabandla argues that Zuma is motivated by personal grudges. Zuma, he suggests, is “a brazen opportunist who is driven by spite, vengeance and the settling of political scores.”
Today, the targets of his ire are his former comrades in the ruling party, who have struggled with how to manage his political skullduggery. Leaders of the ANC—including Zuma’s archenemy, President Cyril Ramaphosa—have been hoping that Zuma would be buried under the administrative and legal burdens of the numerous court cases that he is facing for allegations of corruption.
The effect has been precisely the opposite. Zuma’s court appearances have become an important feature in his political diary. Much like former U.S. President Donald Trump, Zuma uses courthouses as media opportunities. Often, hundreds of supporters will gather to listen to him rail against the justice system and the constitution.
Where he once stood on the side of the constitution and swore an oath to it as president of the country, today, Zuma insists that the hallowed document is responsible for the problems of poor Black South Africans.
During Mandela’s tenure, it would have been unimaginable for an ANC leader to attack the constitution that the party had fought for so long to enact. Zuma’s stance is especially galling in light of the fact that he was at the negotiating table in the early 1990s and played a key role in designing the new constitutional order.
As Cape Town-based political analyst Asanda Ngoasheng noted in an interview, Zuma has a knack for “shirking responsibility and speaking as though he is a challenger of power rather than a person who has spent the last 30 years occupying it.”
South Africans have become accustomed to Zuma’s contradictions. Indeed, his political longevity is a function of his amorality. Zuma is adept at fighting for power and resources for their own sake. Like many in the senior leadership of the ANC, Zuma is not ideologically driven. As Itumeleng Mahabane, a writer and communications advisor, put it, the ANC has become an “ideologically agnostic kleptocracy.”
Thirty years ago, ANC policy debates were steeped in ideological discussions. In that context, Mandela was the perfect ambassador for a movement that spoke to the hope and aspiration of a new political moment. Today, no one is a better embodiment of the brokenness and moral disarray of the stalled revolution than Jacob Zuma.
To become the face of this cynical new brand of politics, Zuma has had to craft a narrative that uses the facts of his life to tell a story that many South Africans can relate to. In the same way that Mandela’s journey from rural Qunu to Robben Island put him in the category of hero, Zuma’s story of his humble beginnings casts him as a relatable everyman.
In a nation that has been let down by heroes, Zuma represents an antihero. He is a simple and flawed man who doesn’t pretend to be what he is not. There are countless videos online of Zuma struggling to read out large numbers as he delivers speeches. Whereas the press ridicules him for his missteps, his base empathizes. They see themselves in him.
And at a time when Mandela’s legacy is under fire, Zuma has been quick to project himself as the antithesis of Mandela. Where Mandela had lofty aims, Zuma characterizes himself as practical. Where Mandela drafted the constitution, Zuma portrays himself as a victim of the constitution. Where Mandela is said to have pandered to white fears, Zuma projects himself as bravely standing his ground.
Although Zuma was intimately involved in drafting the constitution and negotiating the settlement that is now under fire from his supporters, he has managed to depict himself as a convert and critic. It works because Zuma has the common touch—and because he doesn’t feel any moral obligation to defend decisions that he was party to in the past.
As Ngoasheng said, “At a time when many ANC leaders seem to have lost touch with people, Zuma manages to speak their language. In many ways, Zuma is the ultimate apartheid case study, he’s that uncle we all know, the patriarch, the father figure who falls short, the man we lend money to even though we suspect we won’t get it back.”
This idea of Zuma as a family member—both problematic and beloved—was captured in a story that someone once told me.
A few years ago, a friend of mine was in a meeting with Zuma when the former president’s phone rang, interrupting a high-level policy discussion. Zuma decided to answer the call, and so my friend listened as Zuma spoke warmly with the caller, exchanging slow pleasantries before issuing an elaborate set of directions to the person on the other end of the line. Finally, Zuma hung up and explained that the call was from a resident of his home village who had just arrived in Johannesburg and was lost. He had called Zuma to help him figure out how to reach his destination.
While Zuma’s ongoing popularity may baffle many observers—including me—Mabandla argued that there is nothing exceptional about citizens making perplexing choices; South Africa is no exception. He noted that “Americans died because of Trump’s callous handling of COVID. They watched as he tried to burn down U.S. democracy. And yet we are looking at his possible return. They are preparing for him to win again. The same factors are at play when it comes to Zuma.”
As South Africans choose their new leaders, they would do well to remember that there is a new blueprint for leadership. In a country that once saw politics as a noble profession, the rise and rise of Jacob Zuma offers a stark warning against exceptionalism.
Trump may end up in the White House again, but as South Africa heads to the polls, Zuma’s path to the highest political office is blocked—at least for the next five years. But no one should be surprised when Zuma begins to wield power from the sidelines as he adapts to a new political reality.
As Ngoasheng said, “If there is a gray area in the constitution, Zuma is going to test it—he’s going to try to exploit it. He’s not doing it to strengthen us, but I think we should be grateful because he has helped us to close so many loopholes.”
The lesson we have learned over the past 30 years is that Zuma may be capable of bouncing back from political oblivion, but the South African Constitution has thus far proven to even more resilient.
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