Zuma focus of South Africa's parliamentary vote

JOHANNESBURG - For all the talk of crime, jobs or AIDS, South Africa’s parliamentary vote Wednesday is all about Jacob Zuma, who has survived corruption and sex scandals to emerge as one of the country’s most popular leaders ever.

The main opposition summed up its campaign in the waning days with a two-word slogan: “Stop Zuma!” Nothing, though, appears to stand in the way of his becoming South Africa’s next president.

The governing African National Congress is expected to sweep the vote, as it did in the first post-apartheid election in 1994 and the two others since. Parliament elects South Africa’s president, and an ANC-controlled assembly is expected to anoint Zuma in May.

The opposition tried to paint Zuma as corrupt, anti-democratic and intent on plotting with communists to destroy the hard-won economic gains since apartheid ended in 1994. Retired Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-apartheid campaign and has dedicated himself since to building democracy in South Africa, has questioned whether Zuma is fit to govern.

But the ANC sees Zuma, 67, as its first leader since Nelson Mandela able to connect with voters. Ordinary South Africans see parallels between Zuma’s rise from childhood poverty to political prominence and their own struggles and aspirations.

The more Zuma is criticized, the more fiercely his party has defended him. The ANC Youth League dismissed the revered Tutu’s comments as “rantings.”

The ANC brought out its own moral authority the weekend before the vote. Mandela, at 90 frail and largely retired from public life, appeared alongside Zuma at a rally that drew more than 100,000 people to central Johannesburg, and was seen by hundreds of thousands more on state TV and on screens set up at other ANC rallies around the country.

Mandela said nothing at the weekend rally. He didn’t have to. The image of Mandela alongside Zuma - wearing a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the candidate’s face - will be enough to stir the millions of poor, black South Africans who embrace the ANC as the party that defeated apartheid.

Zuma rejects the proposition he dominates South African politics. If he is popular, he said in a February interview with The Associated Press, it is because the ANC is popular.

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