His first term as party leader ends in less than 18 months. He won a tough general election two years ago and has steered a divided party through political turbulence.
With all the international and domestic pressures, President Jacob Zuma, a 69-year-old polygamist, still looks good.
He has remained a teetotaller – he prefers his rooibos and honey – and he still manages a hearty, loud laugh.
Zuma is facing even tougher local government elections on May 18.
Cope is the least of his worries – the ruling party is not focused, but Zuma says: “We are ready.”
The ANC’s local government management track record is not spectacular, it is at war with itself, leaders spend time denying succession plots, and the national government is not in good shape.
Zuma told voters while on the campaign trail in 2008-9 that he wants to ensure that the public service works faster and smarter. But three departments key to an efficient public service and crucial for his domestic policy are unstable at the top.
The Treasury doesn’t have a director-general; Public Service and Administration’s director-general, Themba Maseko, is very new; and Co-operative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka, who is key to local governance, is sickly and facing the chop.
Insiders in government say the Department of Public Service and Administration, under the leadership of Minister Richard Baloyi, is the most “chaotic and dysfunctional” of them all. They point to its failure to implement a single public service policy and its inability to implement Zuma’s proposal to make it easy to fire lazy public servants.
But the ministry’s Dumisani Nkwamba disagrees.
“The minister is firmly in charge and the department firmly on course in driving the policy direction of the (public service). Any insinuation or suggestion, therefore, that the department is departing from this mandate is outrightly rejected.”
In an interview with The Star, Zuma denies there is instability but acknowledges it is tougher to turn around the civil service, which is key to his performance.
“I agree, government’s wheel turns very slowly. This is the most irritating thing… we are working very hard to change the culture, to make the civil servants work differently… but this is not an easy one.
“(The public service)… is very stable… Change… doesn’t weaken the administration. Generally, people who have been taken into these positions are not new to government.”
He says the answer to the lethargy and sluggishness of the state is his Ministry of Monitoring, Performance and Evaluation, under Collins Chabane.
But Chabane’s spokesman, Harold Malokla, admits that no minister has been fired for incompetence.
The ministry is small and has neither adequate staff nor the capacity to monitor all spheres of government. Zuma, however, says he will expand it.
“We are upping the effectiveness of that department because we need to deal with all tiers of government… I talked with the minister… we need to beef up that department… it needs to be big because it must deal with very big challenges… each and every municipality… (We need to) create a situation where these matters are attended to as quickly as possible,” Zuma says.
Fair enough, he has been in office for two years. But some observers and insiders have repeatedly said – without substantiating – that the country is “on auto-pilot”.
As if there aren’t enough problems in national government, Zuma has to put out fires in his party – including the battle for positions in local government – before the results are announced.
For the first time, the ANC invited the community to participate in the selection of councillor candidates, a process described by Zuma as democratic.
However, some of the party’s own members were not happy, and accused the ANC of imposing candidates on them.
This has led to an open – and at times violent – revolt. Some ANC members opted to stand as independent candidates. Zuma doesn’t seem to be shaken by that.
“There are individuals in different places who are not happy about (the process)… If we did not introduce this, we would not have known that there are in fact individual members who are there for themselves, not for the party and not for the people. They have been exposed.”
But their actions could hurt the ANC come polling day, especially given the pockets of disillusionment among some community members who feel the incumbent ANC councillors were unresponsive.
Certain communities exploded as protesters demanded better services, and it turned fatal and politically damaging in Ficksburg. The ANC is facing a threat – or what Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi calls own-goals – in Joburg and Nelson Mandela Bay.
Vavi has warned that the ANC might be defeated in Nelson Mandela Bay, which includes Port Elizabeth, “due to individualism and greed”.
He was referring to the battle for tenders and positions. Zuma has admitted that he is running against time to stop the tender prowl.
“We are working with other departments to make sure that the system for tenders… cannot be easily abused… So that people don’t use their executive authority to influence decisions at the administration and at local government level.”
Joburg’s billing crisis has given the DA, which wants to grab the metro from the ANC, an advantage. Zuma agrees that the crisis “unfortunately gives that kind of impression” that Joburg is badly run.
Zuma is more optimistic than his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, that the ANC will win Cape Town – an ambitious dream, according to analyst Judith February.
Winning Cape Town is one thing, but winning re-election as party president is another. Zuma’s own organisation is sidetracked by a succession battle before its conference next year.
He is technically fighting a war on two fronts. He has to win the local government elections – the second polls under his leadership – and fight a potentially bitter battle for re-election. He was evasive about a second term: “The reality is that the ANC decides who must become what… the unfortunate thing is that people started to talk about it three years before.”
With or without the so-called plot document associated with the embattled crime intelligence boss Richard Mdluli, Zuma’s leadership is under threat from his own comrades.
But unlike Thabo Mbeki – who was humiliatingly sidelined in 2007 from the party and booted out as the country’s president the following year – Zuma doesn’t have a serious, popular challenger – so far.
Motlanthe is unlikely to agree to challenge him, and others – including Minister of Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale – are not heavyweight enough to be a serious threat to Zuma.
Second, there is no rallying battle cry – except general disillusionment – against Zuma. Privately, some senior ANC and government leaders are “tired” of Zuma, but to translate their unhappiness into votes is a tougher battle than getting rid of Mbeki.
Zuma’s first term was dramatic – from his personal scandals and unstable office to the unemployment crisis and new tensions in the alliance.
But he doesn’t think it was all that bad.
He points out that he – using the royal plural – did better than his predecessor.
“There (were) very serious tensions and the element of disunity which ended up shortly after (the 2009) elections with people leaving the ANC… We have succeeded to unite the organisation.”
Zuma’s greatest test will be to lead the party – with the centre still holding – into its centenary next year.