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Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma GCB (born April 12, 1942) or simply Jacob Zuma, is the 4th and current President of South Africa, elected by parliament following his party’s victory in the 2009 general election. He was re-elected in the 2014 election.
Zuma is the President of the African National Congress (ANC), the governing political party, and was Deputy President of South Africa from 1999 to 2005.
Zuma is also referred to by his initials JZ and his clan name Msholozi. Zuma became the President of the ANC on 18 December 2007 after defeating incumbent Thabo Mbeki at the ANC conference in Polokwane. He was re-elected as ANC leader at the ANC conference in Mangaung on 18 December 2012, defeating challenger Kgalema Motlanthe by a large majority. Zuma was also a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), briefly serving on the party’s Politburo until he left the party in 1990. On 20 September 2008, Thabo Mbeki announced his resignation after being recalled by the African National Congress’s National Executive Committee. The recall came after South African High Court Judge Christopher Nicholson ruled that Mbeki had improperly interfered with the operations of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), including the prosecution of Jacob Zuma for corruption.
Zuma has faced significant legal challenges. He was charged with rape in 2005, but was acquitted. He fought a long legal battle over allegations of racketeering and corruption, resulting from his financial advisor Schabir Shaik’s conviction for corruption and fraud. On 6 April 2009, the National Prosecuting Authority dropped the charges, citing political interference, although the decision has been challenged by opposition parties and as of March 2016 the matter is still before the courts. After extensive state-funded upgrades to his rural homestead at Nkandla, the Public Protector found that Zuma had benefited improperly from the expenditure, and the Constitutional Court unanimously held in 2016’s Economic Freedom Fighters v Speaker of the National Assembly that Zuma had failed to uphold the country’s constitution, resulting in calls for his resignation and a failed impeachment attempt in the National Assemble.
Zuma was born in Nkandla, Natal Province (now part of the province of KwaZulu-Natal). His father was a policeman who died when Zuma was young, and his mother was a domestic worker. He received no formal schooling. As a child, Zuma constantly moved around Natal Province and the suburbs of Durban in the area of Umkhumbane (near Chesterville). He has two brothers, Michael and Joseph.
Zuma began engaging in politics at an early age and joined the African National Congress in 1959. He became an active member of Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1962, following the South African government’s banning of the ANC in 1961. Zuma joined the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1963. That year, he was arrested with a group of 45 recruits near Zeerust in the western Transvaal, currently part of the North West Province. Convicted of conspiring to overthrow the Apartheid government, a government led by white minorities, Zuma was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, which he served on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and other notable ANC leaders also imprisoned during this time. Whilst imprisoned, Zuma served as a referee for prisoners’ association football games, organised by the prisoners’ own governing body, Makana F.A.
After his release from prison, Zuma was instrumental in the re-establishment of ANC underground structures in the Natal province. During this time Zuma joined the African National Congress’ Department of Intelligence where he later became the departments Head of Intelligence.
Zuma first left South Africa in 1975 and met Thabo Mbeki in Swaziland, and proceeded to Mozambique, where he dealt with the arrival of thousands of exiles in the wake of the Soweto uprising.
Zuma became a member of the ANC National Executive Committee in 1977. He also served as Deputy Chief Representative of the ANC in Mozambique, a post he occupied until the signing of the Nkomati Accord between the Mozambican and South African governments in 1984. After signing the Accord, he was appointed as Chief Representative of the ANC.
He served on the ANC’s political and military council when it was formed in the mid-1980s, and was elected to the politburo of the SACP in April 1989.
In December 1986, the South African government requested Mozambican authorities expel six senior members of the ANC including Jacob Zuma. As a result of the pressure applied by the apartheid government on Mozambique, in January 1987, Zuma was forced to leave Mozambique.
He moved to the ANC Head Office in Lusaka, Zambia, where he was appointed Head of Underground Structures and shortly thereafter Chief of the Intelligence Department.
Following the end of the ban on the ANC in February 1990, Zuma was one of the first ANC leaders to return to South Africa to begin the process of negotiations.
In 1990, he was elected Chairperson of the ANC for the Southern Natal region, and took a leading role in fighting political violence in the region between members of the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). He was elected the Deputy Secretary General of the ANC the next year, and in January 1994, he was nominated as the ANC candidate for the Premiership of KwaZulu Natal.
The IFP, led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, put particular emphasis on Zulu pride and political power during this period. In this context, Zuma’s Zulu heritage made his role especially important in the ANC’s efforts to end the violence, to emphasise the political (rather than tribal) roots of the violence, and to win the support of Zulu people in the region.
MEC of Economic Affairs and
Tourism After Nelson Mandela was elected president and Thabo Mbeki his deputy, Zuma became the MEC for Economic Affairs and Tourism in his home Province of Kwazulu-Natal.
After the 1994 general election, with the ANC becoming a governing party but having lost KwaZulu-Natal province to the IFP, he was appointed as Member of the Executive Committee (MEC) of Economic Affairs and Tourism for the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government, after stepping aside to allow Thabo Mbeki to run
unopposed for deputy presidency. In December 1994, he was elected National Chairperson of the ANC and chairperson of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, and was re-elected to the latter position in 1996. He was elected Deputy President of the ANC at the National Conference held at Mafikeng in December 1997 and consequently appointed executive Deputy President of South Africa in June 1999.
During this time, he also worked in Kampala, Uganda, as facilitator of the Burundi peace process, along with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Museveni chairs the Great Lakes Regional Initiative, a grouping of regional presidents overseeing the peace process in Burundi, where several armed Hutu groups took up arms in 1993 against a government and army dominated by the Tutsi minority that they claimed had assassinated the first president elected from the Hutu majority.
In September 2008, the breakdown in the relationship between the ruling ANC and its presidential appointee, Thabo Mbeki, reached a tipping point, with the ANC NEC’s decision that Mbeki was no longer fit to govern South Africa. Mbeki elected not to challenge this decision and resigned as President of South Africa. The ANC announced that the party’s deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, would become president until 2009 general elections, after which it was intended that Zuma would become president.
Zuma declared that he would prefer to only serve one term as president.
The ANC won the national election on 6 May 2009 and Zuma was sworn in as President of South Africa on 9 May 2009.
In March 2009, Schabir Shaik was released from prison just 28 months into his fifteen-year sentence. He had been granted medical parole, a leniency meant only for the terminally ill, despite the opinion of his doctors that he was fighting fit and free for hospital discharge.
Media speculation had it that Zuma may have played a role in this eventuality, but the ANC President’s spokesman firmly denied it. Only days before, however, he had publicly stated that, as President of South Africa, he would personally ensure Shaik’s release.
Zuma officially announced the death of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected president, in a press conference on December 5, 2013.
Zuma was booed and heckled by the crowd at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela. Al Jazeera reported that “for many South Africans, Zuma represents some of the nation’s least appealing qualities. They consider their deeply flawed president and faltering government and mutter dark thoughts about a failing state and a banana republic.”
Jacob Zuma is a polygamist who has been married six times and in 2012 The Daily Telegraph estimated Zuma to have 20 children.
Jacob Zuma’s wife are;
- Gertrude Sizakele Khumalo (MaKhumalo), whom he met in 1959 and married shortly after his release from prison in 1973. They have no children.
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Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a cabinet minister from 1994 to 2012, with whom he has four daughters, Msholozi, Gugu, Thuli and Thuthi. They divorced in June 1998. Their youngest daughter, Thuthukile Zuma, was appointed Chief of Staff of the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services in 2014.
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Kate Mantsho (born September 2, 1956), from Mozambique, with whom he had five children, Saady (b. 1980), twins Duduzile and Duduzane (b. 1984), Phumzile (b. 1989) and Vusi. She committed suicide on 8 December 2000 and is buried in Heroes’ Acre at Westpark Cemetery in Johannesburg.
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Nompumelelo Ntuli (MaNtuli), married on 8 January 2008. Ntuli, born 1975, is a resident of KwaMaphumulo near Stanger and has three children. The first two are Thandisiwe and Sinqobile.
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Thobeka Stacie Madiba (born Mabhija, her mother’s name), married 4 January 2010 with whom he has three children. Zuma paid lobola to her clan in 2007. Their first child was born in October 2007. She has another of Zuma’s out-of-wedlock children living with her.
Mabhija grew up in Umlazi, where she matriculated at Umlazi Commercial High School. She has worked at Standard Bank, Ithala, Cell C and SA Homeloans in La Lucia. She owns a house in Durban North. In 2016, the BBC credited her for campaigning for the rights of girls at risk of forced or child-age marriage.
- Gloria Bongekile Ngema, married on 20 April 2012. The wedding took place in Nkandla and was attended by Zuma’s three other wives. Following a traditional ceremony known as umgcagco, the bridal party participated in a traditional Zulu competitive celebratory dance. Ngema has one son with Zuma, Sinqumo.
In June 2012, activists, including some from the ANC itself, complained about the amount the state paid to support Zuma’s wives, especially in the context of the country’s widespread poverty. In 2009/10 Zuma received a budget of £1.2m for “spousal support”, almost twice the amount paid during the terms in office of Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, leading to suggestions that only Zuma’s first wife should receive state support.
Zuma paid 10 cattle as lobola for Swazi Princess Sebentile Dlamini in 2003.
He has another son, Edward, with Minah Shongwe, sister of Judge Jeremiah Shongwe, who asked to be recused from Zuma’s rape trial because of the liaison.
He has two daughters, born 18 January 1998 and 19 September 2002, with Pietermaritzburg businesswoman Priscilla Nonkwaleko Mhlongo.
There are reports of four other children – three from a woman from Johannesburg and one from a woman from Richard’s Bay.
In January 2010, The Sunday Times reported that Sonono Khoza, the daughter of Irvin Khoza, gave birth to Zuma’s 20th child on 8 October 2009, a daughter called Thandekile Matina Zuma.
On 3 February, Zuma responded, confirming that the child was his, and that he had paid inhlawulo, acknowledging paternity. He protested the publishing of the child’s name, saying it was illegal exploitation of the child. He denied that the incident had relevance to the government’s AIDS programme (which promotes marital fidelity as a mechanism for preventing the disease), and appealed for privacy. On 6 February, Zuma said he “deeply regretted the pain that he caused to his family, the ANC, the alliance and South Africans in general.” The office of the presidency’s comment was that it was a private matter.
The mother of the child said: “What baby are you talking about? I have two children. They are in school. These are people’s lives. Let me be,” she told the Sowetan.
Zuma started the Jacob Zuma Foundation to send children to school and build houses for people living in poverty. The chairperson of the Foundation is Dudu Myeni, who is also the chairperson of South African Airways.
Zuma was criticised by gay and lesbian groups after he criticised same-sex marriage at a Heritage Day celebration on 24 September 2006 in Stanger, saying that same-sex marriage was “a disgrace to the nation and to God”: “When I was growing up, an ungqingili (a homosexual) would not have stood in front of me. I would knock him out.”
Jacob Zuma has an estimated net worth of $20 million. He is also the highest-paid African president with an annual salary of $270,000 (net worth estimated in 2017).
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