In his recent book, Diamonds, Gold and War, Martin Meredith writes about "Oom Paul" Kruger in terms that remind one, in a way, of Jacob Zuma.
Zuma, as we all know, was humbly born (1942 in Inkandla, KwaZulu-Natal province). His father died at the end of World War II, after which his mother took up employment as a domestic worker in Durban. He spent his childhood moving between Zululand and the suburbs of Durban, and by 15 took on odd jobs to supplement his mother's income.
Owing to his deprived childhood, Jacob did not receive any formal schooling. He joined the African National Congress in 1959 and became an active member of the movement's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1962, following the banning of the ANC in 1960. While on his way out of the country in 1963, he was arrested with a group of 45 recruits near Zeerust. Convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government, he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, which he served on Robben Island. But what he lacked in formal education, he later made up for in political cunning.
Meredith writes about Kruger: "The British underestimated Kruger. They regarded him as an uneducated, ill-mannered backveld peasant steeped in bigotry - a takhaar to use the Afrikaner word. They were particularly struck by his ugliness, mentioning it so often that it became shorthand for his whole personality and, indeed, his objectives.
"In middle-age, his face coarsened; baggy pouches had begun to appear under his eyes; his nose had broadened; his mouth seemed set in grim disapproval; his hair, parted on the left and neatly slicked down, was turning grey. His broad shoulders showed a slight sag.
"His Dopper dress - a short-cut black jacket, baggy trousers and black hat - gave him a rather quaint appearance" [Doppers were a more fundamentalist wing of the prevailing Dutch Reformed church]. "His body and clothes reeked of the odour of Magaliesburg tobacco, a weed so potent that young men blanched when he offered them his pouch. Added to this was his habit, so disagreeable to the English, of spitting profusely..."
A more perceptive assessment was made by Sir Bartle Frere, the new high commissioner in southern Africa. "I am assured by those who know him well that he is a very shrewd fellow who veils under an assumed clownish manner and affectation of ignorance, considerable ability, that he has great natural eloquence and powers of persuasion." Free concluded, however: "There is nothing in what is visible to a stranger to indicate a possible regenerator of the Transvaal."
Meredith also notes: "[Kruger] had been taught the Bible, but otherwise his formal education had been limited to a course of instruction, lasting three months, given by an itinerant tutor in a schoolroom built of grass and reeds. He became instead a master of the frontier crafts - an expert hunter, horseman and guerrilla fighter." (Zuma's education was furthered on Robben Island by fellow-prisoners).
After Britain's annexation of the Transvaal, Kruger involved himself increasingly in political affairs, and helped, too, to resolve factional disputes. Yet "He never read any book other than the Bible...To Kruger the earth was flat because of what the Bible said."
Nevertheless, in 1864 Kruger was elected Commandant-General of the Orange Free State and in 1883 president of the South African Republic. He died in 1904. Among his followers he was regarded as the greatest man Afrikanerdom had produced.
Zuma's charm is acknowledged, but he is not known among his own people as the greatest man the Africans have produced. Instead of the bible (his views on the flatness of the earth are not known), he placed his reliance on his "machine-gun", which he called for repeatedly in song at rallies.
Like Kruger, he too rose from the bottom to the top. Yet he became ANC president and is now effectively the country's president-elect. The moral appears to be that people should not be judged on their appearances.
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