Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - June 5, 2005
Paddy Harper

His scathing 184-page judgment is the death knell for one of the most illustrious careers in South African liberation politics.

The judge found that Zuma used his office - as KwaZulu-Natal Economic Affairs MEC, as deputy president and as Leader of Government Business in the National Assembly - to promote Shaik's Nkobi group of companies in a number of crucial situations.

Most damagingly, he found that Zuma and Shaik did conduct a corrupt relationship, with Zuma receiving illegal benefits and giving Shaik the patronage of his office in return.

Though the judge made no recommendation about charging Zuma - something the National Prosecuting Authority is understood to have wanted - his comments lay the basis for a prosecution of the 63-year-old former Robben Island prisoner on corruption charges.

And after the ANC national executive committee's comments earlier in the week that the principle of acting firmly against corrupt individuals would apply in Zuma's case, the axe is set to fall on Msholozi (Zuma's clan name by which he is popularly known) sooner rather than later.

When it does, it will firmly close the door on a man who has, from his humble beginnings in Nkandla in rural KwaZulu-Natal in 1942, risen to the second-highest office in the land against considerable odds.

Zuma, the son of a policeman and a domestic worker, became politically active at an early age, joining the ANC in about 1958 after an impoverished childhood robbed him of the chance to attend school.

In 1962 he joined the ANC's military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, but was arrested the following year while leaving the country with a group of 45 recruits.

"JZ", as he is also popularly known, was jailed on Robben Island for 10 years. There he began his formal education, being taught by fellow prisoners.

On his release in 1973, he became involved in re-establishing ANC underground structures in KwaZulu-Natal, but by 1975 he had to leave for Swaziland.

He spent the next 12 years in Swaziland and neighbouring Mozambique, linking up with internal underground structures and dealing with the thousands of youngsters leaving the country to join the struggle in exile.

As early as 1977 his leadership skills and political acumen had been noticed and he was elected to the ANC's national executive committee for the first time. He eventually led the ANC mission in Mozambique - a position he held until the signing of the Nkomati Accord between Mozambique and apartheid South Africa in 1984 - and later rose to head the ANC's underground structures.

By 1987 his position in the ANC was so established that he was entrusted with running its intelligence department, based at its head office in Lusaka, Zambia.

Throughout this time he maintained his influence over the ANC's intelligence and military networks inside the country, particularly on the eastern seaboard in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.

By the time the ANC was unbanned in 1990, Zuma was one of the first exiled leaders to return and begin operating on the ground.

At the same time, he was involved in high-level political negotiations with the apartheid government and was instrumental in organising the Groote Schuur Minute between the political opponents in 1990. In the same year he was elected chairman of the ANC in what was then Southern Natal.

At the time the province was burning, with state-orchestrated violence between the IFP and ANC claiming thousands of lives across the province.

It was then that Zuma's stature and his ability to understand and engage his political foes came to the fore, with him playing arguably the most effective role in peace talks with the IFP.

His ability did not go unnoticed: by 1991 the ANC's national conference had elected him deputy secretary-general. But he was destined to be sent back to KwaZulu-Natal, where fires were still burning, particularly in the run-up to and in the wake of the first democratic election.

One senior IFP member recalls the role Zuma played during this period: "He was the first ANC leader who we felt we could trust and who we knew understood the history of our party and where we were coming from.

"Msholozi was a person we could talk to honestly, who we believed was genuine about peace. He was always willing to negotiate, even though he came from a military and intelligence background. He was a man we could respect, because he respected us."

Zuma was also the ANC's premier candidate in its failed bid to win KwaZulu-Natal in the 1994 poll, and he was appointed Economic Affairs and Tourism MEC in the province in the same year.

In KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma gained a reputation as a great negotiator but an appalling administrator who came to rely on those who placed themselves close to him.

In December the same year, he was elected ANC national chairman, a position he held until taking the ANC deputy presidency at the party's Mafikeng national conference in December 1997.

In June 1999, he was appointed deputy president in President Thabo Mbeki's first Cabinet.

Since his appointment as deputy president, many sectors of society beyond his traditional ANC support base have warmed to Zuma.

He is credited with the October 2002 thaw in hostile relations between the government and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) at a time when the two had been at loggerheads.

As chairman of the South African National Aids Council and the Presidential Task Team on Aids - a cluster of Cabinet ministers he heads - Zuma steered the first set of face-to-face talks about the TAC's call on the state to provide free anti-retroviral drugs.

He is also credited with the move that initiated the "framework agreement" on a national HIV/Aids treatment plan being discussed at the National Economic, Development and Labour Council.

Zuma was also appointed to head the government's moral regeneration programme, a position he is likely to be forced to vacate in view of the contents of Judge Squires's judgment.

Zuma has also taken on a leading role as a deal-maker in a series of peace processes in conflict-torn African states, the latest of these being Burundi.

But while his political career was on the ascent, his personal finances were in a mess.

Increasingly in debt and unable to meet the needs of a large family on his MEC's salary, he turned to Shaik for help.

Zuma knew Shaik through a former comrade, Shaik's brother Mo, a fellow intelligence operative.

Shaik's version of events before court has been that he gave Zuma money - R1.2-million in total - because of his understanding of Zuma's importance to both the ANC and the peace process.

But, as a number of long-standing ANC members recalled while the trial was on, Zuma had been warned against becoming financially involved with Shaik, who had already upset the top ANC leadership with his financial ambitions and money-making plans.

Among those from whom Shaik - and Zuma - tried to conceal the financial relationship was former President Nelson Mandela.

Following the death of ANC treasurer-general Thomas Nkobi, who had taken Shaik under his wing, the new incumbent, Makhenkesi Stofile, wrote to Shaik distancing the party from him.

But as Zuma's dependence on Shaik grew, the "symbiotic" relationship continued, with Shaik asking for political interventions and Zuma granting them.

Now, in all likelihood, Zuma will pay the price for this relationship.

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