Battered, perhaps, but not bowed

South Africans knew they were getting a polygamist when they voted Jacob Zuma in as president last year. They seemed not to mind. Polygamy in the country's traditional societies is legal. But a week ago they also discovered he's a bit of a philanderer and didn't like it one bit. So loud did the protest become after a Sunday newspaper revealed he had fathered a child by a friend's daughter that he issued an abject apology last Saturday. It was the daughter of another friend whom Zuma was accused, in 2006, of raping. He was found not guilty in a subsequent trial.

Zuma is an odd figure in South African politics. He's a gentle, genial and generous figure who hates leaving visitors disappointed. The very opposite of a technocrat (he would admit, himself, that his knowledge of the finer points of running a complex economy is limited), he is instead almost entirely political.

Having inherited the leadership of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) from Thabo Mbeki in December 2007, Zuma has quietly set about trying to heal the wounds caused by Mbeki's leadership as ANC president and as president of the republic. In the process, however, he may simply be creating new wounds.

Mbeki was swept aside by a wave of antipathy from the unions and communists on the left of the ANC-led alliance that runs the country, and hostility from the ANCs very powerful women's and youth leagues. Their collective weapon for seeing Mbeki off was Zuma. At the time he faced serious corruption charges but these were turned, by Mbeki's enemies, into a conspiracy by the ‘elitist' and ‘right-wing' Mbeki to keep Zuma out of office. The ploy worked. Zuma first won the party leadership and then the general elections last year, shortly after the corruption charges against him were conveniently dropped by prosecutors.

Since then Zuma has concentrated on trying to ensure that the broad lobby that got him into power is rewarded, and that his friends are taken care of. The man jailed for broadly the same corruption charges Zuma faced has been let out of jail. People who stood by him have become ministers, ambassadors and advisors. The communists, unions and youth and women's leagues can all count some of their number in the Zuma Cabinet.

But then the fighting started. The Left complains it is being sidelined; that a Cabinet post designed to give one of its number power over economic planning has been neglected and underfunded. The ANC Youth League is constantly at war with the Communist Youth League. Where the Mbeki split was generally considered to be between Left and Right, Zuma's split is becoming one between nationalists and communists.

He will, naturally, incline towards the nationalists. But there is no comfort there. The corruption that has gripped the South African state is almost entirely driven by a nationalist stampede for government tenders, easy wealth through black economic empowerment programmes and simple, grinding, fraud in the bureaucracy.

Lack of focus

While all this is going on, the business of delivering better lives to the poor (the vast majority of the population) is ignored. Violent protests in townships and rural areas against poor service delivery are a regular feature of South African life. Slowly but surely, the ANC is using up its own political credit. Had that not been the case, Zuma would in all probability not have been forced by his own party colleagues to apologise for his womanising.

The affair will cost him politically but it won't sink him. For one thing, the party is divided about a successor. Second, the economy is recovering from recession more quickly than predicted. The Fifa World Cup later this year will divert attention from him and as the only organised opposition party is white-led, the legacy of apartheid makes it extremely unlikely that any opponent could make a serious dent in the ANCs national position.

- Peter Bruce is the editor of Business Day, a daily newspaper in Johannesburg. Previously he was Madrid bureau chief, European news editor and UK news editor of the Financial Times.