10 Things you don’t know about Jacob Zuma

1.  Jacob Zuma’s father was a policeman who died when Zuma was young, and his mother a domestic worker. He received no formal schooling. As a child, Zuma constantly moved around Natal Province and the suburbs of Durban in the area of Umkhumbane (near Chesterville). He has two brothers, Michael and Joseph

2.  Jacob Zuma began engaging in politics at an early age and joined the African National Congress in 1959. He became an active member of Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1962, following the South African government’s banning of the ANC in 1961

3.  Jacob Zuma joined the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1963. That year, he was arrested with a group of 45 recruits near Zeerust in the western Transvaal, currently part of the North West Province. Convicted of conspiring to overthrow the Apartheid government, a government led by white minorities, Zuma was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, which he served on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela and other notable ANC leaders also imprisoned during this time.

4.  Whilst imprisoned, Jacob Zuma served as a referee for prisoners’ association football games, organised by the prisoners’ own governing body, Makana F.A.

5.  After his release from prison, Jacob Zuma was instrumental in the re-establishment of ANC underground structures in the Natal province

6.  Zuma first left South Africa in 1975 and met Thabo Mbeki in Swaziland, and proceeded to Mozambique, where he dealt with the arrival of thousands of exiles in the wake of the Soweto uprising.

7.  Jacob Zuma became a member of the ANC National Executive Committee in 1977. He also served as Deputy Chief Representative of the ANC in Mozambique, a post he occupied until the signing of the Nkomati Accord between the Mozambican and South African governments in 1984. After signing the Accord, he was appointed as Chief Representative of the ANC

8.  Jacob Zuma served on the ANC’s political and military council when it was formed in the mid-1980s, and was elected to the politburo of the SACP on April 1989

9.  In January 1987, Jacob Zuma was forced to leave another country, this time by the government of Mozambique. He moved to the ANC Head Office in Lusaka, Zambia, where he was appointed Head of Underground Structures and shortly thereafter Chief of the Intelligence Department

10.  Following the end of the ban on the ANC in February 1990, Jacob Zuma was one of the first ANC leaders to return to South Africa to begin the process of negotiations