By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 19, 2009

JOHANNESBURG -- One week before this country's fourth democratic elections, South Africa's main opposition party has unveiled a last-ditch campaign slogan that minces no words: "Stop Zuma."

In a nation tumbling toward recession and beset by rampant unemployment, poverty and AIDS, the main and most divisive election issue has been one man: Jacob Zuma. The jovial and wily leader of the ruling African National Congress, having fought off charges of rape and corruption, is poised to become president of this regional powerhouse after Wednesday's poll.

For Zuma, who rose from unschooled herd boy to guerrilla fighter, the victory would be the pinnacle in a story of unlikely comebacks. What it would mean for South Africa's young democracy is an open question. In the final days of the campaign, Zuma is viewed by critics as a man prepared to destroy democratic institutions in a quest for power and by backers as a conciliator who will unify a divided party and lift up the poor.

The ANC is expected to win the election with more than 60 percent of the vote. But analysts say the victory will indicate more about voters' loyalty to the former black liberation movement than their faith in Zuma. Recent polls indicate that about as many South Africans trust Zuma as distrust him, while just half of likely ANC voters think he is not guilty of long-standing graft charges, which were dropped this month in a controversial move by prosecutors.

"Listen, there's no country where there's no corruption," one ANC supporter, who gave his name as Andrew, said at a Pentecostal church where Zuma spoke on a recent Sunday. "Zuma is a very kind man."

But Zuma, 67, will take office at a time when South Africans are wrestling with bigger questions about whether the country and its venerated ruling party are on a path toward progress or on a road to ruin. Zuma's fiercest critics seem to believe the latter, and in him they have found a powerful symbol of rot.

"The ramifications for the country, and particularly the judiciary and the rule of law, are absolutely catastrophic," said Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC member of Parliament who says he quit in protest over the party's silencing of corruption probes. "Zuma is corrupt, and politically he operates in quite a thuggish manner."

On the campaign trail, it is not easy to discern just what Zuma is. The off-the-cuff remarks that fanned fears in the past -- against homosexuality and for vigilante justice, for example -- have become rarer. Now, true to ANC tradition, which eschews displays of self-promotion, he methodically reads speeches that repeat the party's promises to create jobs, develop hinterlands and boost services and welfare for the poor.

Though unions and the Communist Party supported his rise, Zuma has strived to appease investors and business leaders by vowing not to dismantle the economic policies that have kept South Africa stable. He says his government will be tough on criminals, lazy civil servants and corruption.

"All citizens must remain vigilant against any abuse of power," he told reporters after his corruption charges were dropped.

But it is after speeches -- when he cracks jokes in his native Zulu, dances and sings -- that Zuma has won many fans among the grass roots, who had felt little connection to the stiff and scholarly Thabo Mbeki, who led South Africa as president for most of the past decade.

"He's a good leader because he does not run away from problems," said Thandeka Shongwe, a student, who took a break from shopping in a township mall to laud Zuma's common-man appeal and his decision to pursue his ambitions despite his legal woes. "He's a fighter."

There is little doubt about that, and Zuma's battles have provided rich material for his critics. Zuma, who has several wives, was acquitted in 2006 of rape but only after acknowledging in court that he had had unprotected sex with the accuser, who he knew was HIV-positive, and showered afterward to ward off infection.

Then there were the corruption charges that dogged Zuma for four years. The allegations stemmed from his relationship with his financial adviser, who was convicted in 2005 of soliciting bribes for and bribing Zuma, who was then Mbeki's deputy president. Zuma has said the funds were innocent loans misinterpreted by Westerners and maintained that the case against him was a plot designed to thwart his career.

Even so, Mbeki fired Zuma, creating a deep rift in the ANC that propelled a meteoric comeback by Zuma. In 2007, Zuma beat Mbeki for leadership of the party, which nine months later forced Mbeki to step down as president of the nation.

The charges clouded Zuma's campaign until two weeks ago, when prosecutors announced that they had found evidence of meddling by investigators and would abandon the case for good. The decision was assailed by newspaper columnists, opposition parties and legal experts, who viewed it as evidence the ANC had strong-armed the prosecuting agency. Zuma backers saw it as proof of their thesis.

"The phenomenon of Zuma has been . . . the idea that if your supporters believe that you are being persecuted or victimized by an establishment, they tend to rally around you," said Steven Friedman of the Center for the Study of Democracy here.

Zuma was born in the hilly village of Nkandla in the eastern coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal. Zuma, the son of a domestic worker and a policeman who died when Zuma was a young child, grew up herding cows and taught himself to read.

Inspired by a trade unionist half-brother, he joined the ANC as a teenager. He later joined the anti-apartheid organization's underground armed movement and was arrested in 1963 for conspiring to overthrow the government -- an accusation he considered, like the later corruption allegations, a "funny" charge, he told his biographer.

Zuma spent a decade imprisoned on Robben Island. That was followed by 15 years in exile, during which he become chief of the ANC's intelligence department at the movement's headquarters in Zambia.

"He always wanted to prove that your background doesn't determine your destiny," said Zulu Zwelabo, the mayor of Zuma's home village, Nkandla, and a member of the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Friends say Zuma most likes to be at the homestead he has built in Nkandla, where he receives supplicant villagers and slaughters cows. That traditionalism appeals to many South Africans.

"He is proud of his culture," said Charles Tawil, an American businessman who recounted an occasion last year when Zuma, a close friend of his, took a phone call when they were at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. After speaking in Zulu for 15 minutes, Tawil recalled, "Zuma said, 'I was talking with my brother in Nkandla, and he was talking about his cow, that she had some rash. And in my culture, he's my big brother, so I must listen to him and show him respect.' "

Zuma's supporters say elite critics -- mostly whites -- have cynically misrepresented the skins and spears he sometimes dons for Zulu ceremonies as evidence of savage backwardness. In fact, while some of Zuma's zealous supporters have said they would "kill" for him and called for revenge on those who may have plotted against him, Zuma himself speaks more like a peacemaker.

"Hate is an intense and all-consuming emotion," Zuma said recently at a Pentecostal church, where he received a hero's welcome. "On the other hand, love and forgiveness are liberating emotions."

Allies, analysts and supporters who have never met him all attribute Zuma's ascendancy to his good listening skills, open-mindedness and willingness to build consensus. Those skills helped Zuma broker an end to a bloody war between factions of the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party in the 1990s, analysts say, and now he is using them to charm tribal chiefs and Afrikaners on the campaign trail.

It is in those skills that some of Zuma's supporters see hope for a new era in South African politics.

Roelf Meyer, who was the apartheid government's chief negotiator as it worked out a handover of power to the ANC, recalled meeting Zuma when he arrived from Zambia in 1990 to help smooth the return for exiles. Meyer said he was unsure what to expect of Zuma, who was a little-known figure. But Meyer said he saw warmth in Zuma's eyes, a quality he believes Zuma has never lost.

"He has an inclusive approach, a collective decision-making approach, and an approach towards trying to unite people. . . . Some of those characteristics remind me of Nelson Mandela," Meyer said. "My prediction is that after a year, people will look back and say this was a change for the better for this country."