Profile: Jacob Zuma

Last Modified: 23 Apr 2008
By: Channel 4 News

The political career and personal intrigues of the president of the African National Congress.

Early years

Jacob Zuma was born on 12 April 1942 in Inkandla, KwaZulu-Natal Province.

After his father died, at the end of World War 2, he spent his childhood moving between Zululand and the suburbs of Durban, where his mother was employed as a domestic worker.

Zuma had no formal schooling, working odd jobs to supplement his mothers income.

Influenced by a trade unionist relative, Zuma became involved in politics at an early age, joining the African National Congress in 1959.

Political career

The ANC was banned in 1960 and in 1962 Zuma became an active member of Umkhonto We Sizwe. A year later he was convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government after being arrested with a group of 45 recruits near Zeerust in the North West Province.

He served 10 years' imprisonment on Robben Island. After his release he helped mobilise internal resistance and was instrumental in the re-establishment of ANC underground structures in the then Natal province, (KwaZulu-Natal) between 1973 and 1975.

He left South Africa in 1975 and for the next 12 years, based first in Swaziland and then Mozambique, dealt with thousands of young exiles who poured out of South Africa in the wake of the Soweto uprising.

He rose rapidly through the ranks of the ANC, becoming a member of the National Executive Committee in 1977.

He 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 and was one of a few who remained in Mozambique to carry out the work of the organisation, crossing in and out of South Africa on a number of occasions.

He was forced to leave Mozambique in January 1987 after considerable pressure on the Mozambican government by the PW Botha regime. 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.

He also served on the ANC's political and military council when it was formed in the mid-80s.

After the lifting of the ANC ban

The ban on the ANC was lifted in February 1990, and Zuma was one of the first ANC leaders to return to South Africa to begin the process of negotiations.

In 1990, at the first Regional Congress of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, he was elected Chairperson of the Southern Natal region. The following year he was elected Deputy Secretary General.

1994 was a busy year: he was nominated as the ANC candidate for the Premiership of the KwaZulu-Natal province; was appointed as Member of the Executive Committee of Economic Affairs and Tourism for the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government; and was elected National Chairperson of the ANC and chairperson of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.

He was elected Deputy President of the ANC at the National Conference held at Mafikeng in December 1997 and was honoured with the Nelson Mandela Award for Outstanding Leadership in Washington DC, USA the following year.

In June 1999 Zuma was appointed Executive Deputy President of South Africa.

Personal life

Zuma has led a colourful - and controversial - private life. As part of Zulu custom, he believes in polygamy - he's been married at least three times, some of whom he has been married to at the same time, and he is the father of 20 children by nine women.

Business has also cast a shadow; in 2004 his financial adviser, the Durban businessman Schabir Shaik, was investigated over bribery allegations to acquire arms contacts.

After it emerged Shaik had been making payments to Zuma, charges were brought and then later dropped.

Just a year later in 2005 Zuma again brushed with the law when he was accused of rape by the 31-year-old daughter of a fellow ANC member.

Zuma claimed the sex was consensual, and that her meeting him in a short skirt made her own intentions clear: "In Zulu culture you cannot leave a woman if she is ready. To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape".

He also admitted to not using a condom despite knowing the woman to be HIV positive, suggesting the shower he had taken afterwards was sufficient protection.

And it didn't end there. Although acquitted, the case became the subject of satire in the media. Zuma sued the newspapers and a radio station over the "allegations and innuendo" and now the South African media have accused him of threatening freedom of speech.