Jacob Zuma
Jacob Zuma spent ten years in prison with Mandela, nine years as president, and has been in court for most of the time since. He was born in rural Zululand, lost his father young, herded cattle and never went to school; he learned to read as an adult. He joined the ANC at seventeen and its armed wing at twenty-one, was arrested in 1963 and served ten years on Robben Island, then ran intelligence for the movement in exile. He was a formidable negotiator in the transition and in ending the violence in KwaZulu-Natal between the ANC and Inkatha. He was dismissed as deputy president in 2005 when his financial adviser was convicted of soliciting a bribe on his behalf over an arms deal, and acquitted of rape in a separate trial in 2006 - a case that damaged him with women and did not damage him with his base. He took the ANC leadership from Mbeki in 2007 anyway, and the presidency in 2009 after the charges were dropped. The word that attached itself to his government is state capture: the Gupta family's influence over appointments and contracts, documented at length by the Zondo commission, and the hollowing of the revenue service, the power utility and the prosecution. The ANC recalled him in 2018. He was jailed in 2021 for refusing to testify to that commission, which set off the worst riots since apartheid, and was released on medical parole within two months. He returned in 2024 at the head of a new party that took a fifth of the vote in KwaZulu-Natal.
- Lived: 1942 CE – ?
- Nationality: South African
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
