White washing Zuma

A dash through Europe has helped the new ANC leader establish his pragmatic credentials with diplomats and businesses With one bound Jacob Zuma was free. No longer was the new President of the African National Congress a dangerous populist in a threatening alliance with communists and trades unionists. Instead, he was a considered diplomat given to statesmanlike utterances, a pragmatist whose willingness to listen to other viewpoints marks him apart from his political rival and President of the Republic, Thabo Mbeki. That at least was the view of Europe's business people and bien-pensants who spent time with Zuma on his whirlwind tour of Western Europe in the week ending 26 April.

READING MBEKI’S LETTERS

At the end of April 2008, the then South African President Thabo Mbeki sent a letter to US president Bush vehemently critiquing his stance on Zimbabwe (the story story broke and caused a furor in the press in May 2008).

Often described as aloof, stoic, inaccessible in person, Mbeki was most comfortable and outspoken on the page. A prolific letter writer, he his weekly Friday missive to the nation frequently combined political commentary with academic analysis, passages of internal monologue, literary gestures and wry political ploys.

Reading Mbeki’s letters: we read Mbeki’s weekly “letter to the Nation” as a historical archive, political treatise, an autobiography and an epic epistolary novel, a fragmented book that offers rare insights into a man, a country, a continent.

The online archive of his letters spans the almost 10 years of his Presidency, from 2003 to 2007.