In South Africa an estimated 5.7 million South Africans were living with AIDS at the end of 2007. The prevalence of people infected jumped from about 4.4% in 1994 to 18.1% in 2007, according to a UNAIDS report. So what has this to do with the election of Jacob Zuma?

Many in the international community and, indeed, in South Africa are greatly disappointed by the lack of real progress in cubbing the spread of AIDS in south Africa, a country with a far better communication mechanism than Uganda, which until 2008 had maintained a zero growth rate of AIDS sufferers.  In this regard we have a strange performer accending to the number one citizen spot in the South Africa and his name will be on the world's collective tongue: Jacob Zuma.

Zuma comes tabloid-ready, one doesn't need to look far for unseemly tales about the former ANC freedom fighter. Perhaps the most salacious story about Zuma was back in 2005, when a woman accused Zuma, then ANC's deputy president, of rape. Zuma insists she implicitly asked for it and called the tryst consensual. In his testimony he told court that "in Zulu culture you cannot leave a woman if she is ready. To deny her sex, that would have been tantamount to rape." A judge acquitted Zuma, but not before the lawmaker admitted he knew the woman was HIV-positive and testified that he had "protected" himself from infection by taking a shower immediately after having unsafe sex. The real news is in the fact that Zuma was, at the time, heading the National AIDS Council.

The press found ready hay in his ill-informed explanation, and Zuma retaliated by filing several lawsuits against publications he claims tarnished his name. He's most recently sued Britain's the Guardian over an article in which an opinion particle referred to him as "unschooled and "polygamous." Zuma has little education, and I will not hold hum accountable for that but, he has 6 wives (officially).

The big worry is that Zuma might come down heavy on the judiciary. The former herds-boy, who has not shade most of his traditional Zulu characteristics made perplexing comments about the judicial system last week. "If I sit here and I look at a chief justice of the Constitutional Court, you know, that is the ultimate authority, which I think we need to look at it because I don't think we should have people who are almost like God in a democracy... Why are they not human beings? I don't want to debate that now, but at the right time I'm keen to engage them before the issue becomes public." I fear for you judges in south Africa as this accomplished Zulu warrior takes the throne.

The ANC announces as its goal the attainment of a two-thirds majority in the national assembly. This will guarantee it the authority to change the constitution if they wish so, and the undoubted target will be the judiciary. One only hopes that the two major opposition parties Democratic Alliance (DA) and the new Congress of the People (COPE) will manage to cut back the number, and tame this political leopard. And the demographic map of present day South Africa offers hope. South African voters are getting younger, the result both of a high birthrate and because of the the impact of HIV-Aids a declining average lifespan. The ANC can not claim to have a lockdown policy on the  young "cellphone" generation - which has little direct memory of apartheid. These might vote logic, instead of hitorical fears.

It's true that Jacob Zuma has emerged as his own man during the course of the campaign, he is an avid campaigner, and a political tactician of his own calibre. He is more of a self made man than a creature of the coalition of trade unions, Communist Party and ANC Youth League which propelled him to the leadership. But his appeal is divisive, "and his ascendancy to the presidency will be of someone tainted by suspicion who - but for the ANC's politicization of supposedly neutral state institutions - might otherwise be in jail.

The saddest aspect is that the expectation and even acceptance of corruption at all national, provincial and local levels have become the norm. The saddest point is that Zuma has been at the center of most of the corruption scandals, which have kept him in court until last week when the Public prosecutorial Agency coward under pressure and dropped all charges against him.

The opposition has publicly said that Zuma has not proven his innocence. He has not been acquitted. He has merely been let off the hook by the NPA for reasons that have nothing to with the substantive merits of the case against him. And they are right! The claim by the Acting National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), Mokotedi Mpshe, that Zuma cannot be prosecuted because there was an "abuse of process" by the former head of the Scorpions, Leonard McCarthy, and the former head of the NPA, Bulelani Ngcuka, in determining when to recharge him, is neither here nor there. It is irrelevant. The NPA has not given any indication of how this could have prejudiced Jacob Zuma.  There is still a solid case against Zuma, based on a mountain of evidence, with good prospects of success in court.  The most telling aspect of this whole fiasco is that the prosecution team, which has gathered over 93,000 documents in the 8 years it has been investigating the charges, strongly opposed withdrawing the case because it still believes that it can win in court. The DA has already applied to the Supreme Court for a review, but the matter will come before the court well after the lections are done.

So there you are friends; tightened your political, economic, and social belts! Oops, I must not forget the moral belts too, need to be really tight when it comes to Zuma's South Africa. If you doubt me ask Bishop Desmond Tutu, who has advised South Africans not to turn their country into a symbol of immorality.