Births on April 12

Jacob Zuma, South African politician, 4th President of South Africa

Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma (Zulu: [geɮʱejiɬeˈkisa ˈzʱuma]; born 12 April 1942) is a South African politician who was the fourth president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018. He is also referred to by his initials JZ and his clan name Msholozi. A former anti-apartheid activist and allegedly a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he was president of the African National Congress (ANC) between 2007 and 2017.

Zuma was born in the rural region of Nkandla in what is now the province of KwaZulu-Natal, still the centre of Zuma's support base. He joined the ANC as a teenager in 1959 and spent ten years as a political prisoner on Robben Island. He went into exile in 1975 and was ultimately appointed head of the ANC's intelligence department. After the ANC was unbanned in 1990, he rose quickly through the party's national leadership, becoming deputy secretary general in 1991, national chairperson in 1994, and deputy president in 1997. He was deputy president of South Africa from 1999 to 2005 under President Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela's successor. Mbeki dismissed him on 14 June 2005, after his financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was convicted of making corrupt payments to him in connection with the Arms Deal. Zuma was charged with corruption, and was also acquitted on rape charges in a highly publicised 2006 trial. Nevertheless, he retained the support of a left-wing coalition inside the ANC, which helped him depose Mbeki as ANC president in December 2007 at the ANC's Polokwane elective conference.

He was elected president of South Africa in the 2009 general election and took office on 9 May 2009; the criminal charges against him were formally withdrawn in the same week. As president, Zuma launched the R4-trillion National Infrastructure Plan and signed a controversial nuclear power deal with the Russian government, blocked by the Western Cape High Court in 2017. A former member of the South African Communist Party, he increasingly relied on left-wing populist rhetoric, and in his 2017 State of the Nation address announced a new policy of "radical economic transformation." Few of the attendant policy initiatives were implemented before the end of his presidency, but they included land expropriation without compensation, free higher education, and a series of attempted structural reforms in key sectors, involving restrictions on foreign ownership and more stringent black economic empowerment requirements. In the international arena, Zuma emphasised South-South solidarity and economic diplomacy. The admission of South Africa to the BRICS grouping has been described as a major triumph for Zuma, and he has also been praised for his HIV/AIDS policy.

However, his presidency was beset by controversy, especially during his second term. In 2014, the Public Protector found that Zuma had improperly benefited from state expenditure on upgrades to his Nkandla homestead, and in 2016 the Constitutional Court ruled that Zuma had thereby failed to uphold the Constitution, leading to calls for his resignation and a failed impeachment attempt in the National Assembly. By early 2016, there were also widespread allegations – investigated by the Zondo Commission between 2018 and 2021 – that the Gupta family had acquired immense and corrupt influence over Zuma's administration, amounting to state capture. Several weeks after Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa was elected to succeed Zuma as ANC president in December 2017, the ANC National Executive Committee recalled Zuma. Facing his fifth vote of no confidence in Parliament, he resigned on 14 February 2018 and was replaced by Ramaphosa the next day.

Shortly after his resignation, on 16 March 2018, the National Prosecuting Authority announced that Zuma would again face prosecution on corruption charges relating to the 1999 Arms Deal. He pleaded not guilty on 26 May 2021, and the trial is set to resume on 11 April 2022. In a separate legal matter, in July 2021 Zuma was imprisoned in Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal for contempt of court. After testifying for less than three days at the Zondo Commission into state capture allegations, he refused to return, violating summonses and a Constitutional Court order compelling his testimony. On 29 June 2021, the Constitutional Court sentenced him to fifteen months' imprisonment. He was arrested on 7 July and then released on medical parole two months later, on 5 September. The high court rescinded his parole on 15 December, but he has been granted leave to appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court of Appeal.