A friend recently observed that the angriest Africans on this continent that one encounters are found in South Africa.

I couldn’t help but agree with him having visited a number of South African cities over the years.

Africans are generally a happy people — able to maintain good cheer through adversity and all manner of calamity.

But in South Africa, while the damage done by apartheid is not always apparent, the surly, grim faced, unemployed young men standing at street corners with a fierce wounded anger burning from their eyes are unique.

One has to admit that there is a strain of snobbishness in the debate about Jacob Zuma as he prepares to ascend to the presidency of Africa’s most important country.

Indeed, some commentators insist that “thinking” South Africans are aghast at the realisation that the continent’s most sophisticated economy with the most progressive liberal constitutional order, now has a “real African president,” a proverbial Big Man in-the-making complete with the cloud of corruption allegations, “complicated” personal life and a series of close shaves with the law.

But there is a sense in which Jacob Zuma should epitomise the achievement of the African dream: A former cowherd, son of a policeman and a maid, with reportedly no formal education, a true traditionalist, hero of the liberation struggle who has overcome the most incredible hardships to become the most powerful man in Africa.

It is the very same qualities that make Zuma’s story special that seem to cause so much nervousness among the middle classes whose values and pretensions he does not even feign to embrace.

Jacob Zuma turned off the middle class when during his trial for rape (of which he was acquitted) he reportedly said that he had taken a shower after having sex with an HIV-positive woman, in order to minimise the risk of infection.

He was also reported to have commented, “In Zulu culture, you cannot leave a woman if she is ready. To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape.”

This whole matter conjured up images of the kind of “backwardness” that makes Westernised Africans cringe; women’s groups were sincerely outraged and the entire white middle class was appalled.

In the townships these issues don’t count for much. So Zuma isn’t politically neat; so what?

But those among his detractors who have studied the man admit that as a politician his skills are formidable.

Affable, engaging and true to his roots and traditions, the former head of Umkhonto wa Sizwe’s intelligence arm, Zuma, has demonstrated tenacity, shrewdness and a capacity to mobilise that seems to have caught even the best educated opponents flatfooted. He is politically light of foot and tongue.

Some argue that this is his greatest weakness, his soft underbelly, that he is a populist at heart and has made too many promises to too many constituencies on his journey to the presidency.

Last week, informed anti-Zuma watchers were beginning to appreciate two things: First, that he is not only a politician, a candidate for president, he is also a phenomenon; his populism is more than a demonstration of Big Man aspirations.

Zuma is a political creature produced by the ghastly wounds that apartheid inflicted on South Africa; he is a closer fit to the majority that feels, as one ANC insider explained, “that democracy has not delivered and are beginning to blame it for their desperation and the inequalities they see before their eyes every day.”

His supporters argue that Thabo Mbeki represented the minority black middle class and whites, not the majority — the “real’ people of South Africa today.”

Second, some South Africans are beginning to argue that a belief in a South African exceptionalism is undermining clarity of thinking about the country’s future by the very people who should be shaping it.

This is an illusion that we Kenyans have also been subject to in the past — that “It cannot happen here” — while the big “it” is already inside the gate and playing out its inexorable logic.

The coming introspection will be useful not only for South Africans but for all of us.

The real test for a president Jacob Zuma will be his capacity to deliver on the many promises he has made.

Part of his problem may be that having made so many promises to so many groups, it is actually impossible for him to deliver.

Insiders insist that this means one of four scenarios will play themselves out: First of all, as discontent rises, the ANC will fracture further.

Second, that a Zuma presidency will crack down on dissent as opposition to its failures grows.

Third, that an unhappy ANC elite will depose him much in the way Mbeki was dispatched into the political wilderness by Zuma and his supporters.

Fourth, and some argue most likely, Zuma will cleverly reach out to foes and form coalitions with them as his troubles multiply, bringing as many into the tent as he can. They argue that this is in keeping with his style.

Some were oddly surprised that Nelson Mandela came out in open support of Zuma during the last days of the campaign, though in truth the global icon really had no option but to support the candidate of the party he suffered so long to build.

This said, it is clear that Mandela’s public support for Zuma, partly perhaps also informed by serious disappointment with an Mbeki he found aloof and inaccessible, has led to a subtle split in the wider Mandela family.

While his ex-wife Winnie is a strong Zuma supporter, it is said that Graca Machel is not and Mandela’s first daughter too is reportedly opposed to him. Insiders say, however, that Mandela set aside personal questions and put the party first in backing Zuma.

The immediate fears of Zuma developing Big Man tendencies will be proved or disproved by the way he treats his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki’s deposal was far too ruthlessly executed, the former head of state’s sympathisers argue, for decorum and for the dignity owed to a doyen of the ANC.

Indeed, since he stepped down, some have described Thabo Mbeki as a man thoroughly depressed by his utterly unfamiliar new situation, where the ANC is not the centre of the world.

They argue that Thabo gave his entire life to the ANC and really has no other.

But the clearest early signal that hard days may be coming will be, as some of Zuma’s more virulent supporters are insisting, when a Zuma-led ANC forces Thabo Mbeki to endure the ultimate humiliation and strips him of his party membership.

Then there are those who argue that Zuma is far too smart for that but won’t be beyond letting some of his supporters wave that particular sjambok in the face of opponents as he consolidates power.

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