A Comeback of Hope
The Political Resilience of South Africa's Jacob Zuma Is Fueled by the Deep Disenchantment Many of His Countrymen Feel 13 Years After the End of Apartheid
Jacob Zuma, left, a former anti-apartheid guerrilla and former deputy president, is likely to become leader of the ruling African National Congress tomorrow. He would then be the most likely ANC nominee to lead the nation, rivaling Thabo Mbeki, who has been president since 1999.
(By Jerome Delay -- Associated Press)
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Saturday, December 15, 2007
SOWETO, South Africa --
In the violent days of his youth, when Mabhudi Zwane used to hurl gasoline bombs at white policemen besieging this black township, his dreams for a new South Africa went beyond ending apartheid.
Zwane also dreamed of having a good job, a new car, a house of his own -- things he knew existed in abundance beyond the mountains of mine sludge and industrial wasteland that separated Soweto from Johannesburg, black from white.
Nearly two decades later, as Zwane struggles to survive on the few dollars a day he earns washing taxis outside a posh mall, he has set his sights on a new dream: that Jacob Zuma, the former anti-apartheid guerrilla whose theme song is the liberation anthem "Bring Me My Machine Gun," will become president of the ruling African National Congress next week.
Zwane said he believes that Zuma will then bring jobs and prosperity to millions of poor black people, completing the revolution that ended apartheid in 1994.
"Zuma can understand what we're crying for," said Zwane, 35, whose face is scarred and weathered, his compact body lean and taut with muscle. "I trust, I love that guy."
Zuma's comeback since being fired as deputy president in 2005 has been propelled by the deep disenchantment many South Africans feel with the post-apartheid era as constructed by Thabo Mbeki, first as Nelson Mandela's deputy president and principal policy adviser, and since 1999 as the country's president.
In the 13 years since the ANC came to power, legal segregation has disappeared. There are no officially black or white schools, residential areas, public restrooms. Blacks and other nonwhites can travel freely, shop where they want, marry across racial lines, own any kind of property and vote.
But separateness -- the literal translation of the Afrikaans term "apartheid" -- has persisted in many forms, keeping even black South Africans divided by class, neighborhood and tribe. Zwane, like Zuma, is a Zulu. Mbeki, Mandela and many of the top ANC leaders are Xhosas.
Zwane believes he yet again has ended up on the wrong side, he said, without the steady income necessary to buy his own home, marry, start a family.
He wakes up each morning in a tiny, dingy concrete room behind his parents' house and hustles all day for work washing the vans that are used universally as taxis here. When there is a slow day -- caused by a strike, bad weather, the holiday season -- he walks home hungry, and often angry.
"Just look at my face now," Zwane said, pointing toward what he says are scars from long-ago township battles. Then, "I was fighting," he said. Now, "Mr. Zuma must take over."
