South Africa’s Jacob Zuma on mines, land and leadership

President Jacob Zuma has for the first time in a long while spoken candidly about major policy issues facing South Africa, including the controversial calls to nationalise the mines in one of the world’s major producers of precious minerals, such as gold and platinum.

When I met President Jacob Zuma at his official Mahlamba Ndlopfu residence in the capital, Pretoria, he looked calm and confident after last week’s policy conference storm.

Before we could talk about the details of the most contentious policy deliberation by the more than 3,500 African National Congress delegates, we had to clear the air about what actually transpired in some of the closed sessions.

There were newspaper reports saying the plenary descended into chaos with fist fights. I put it to the 70-year-old President Jacob Zuma that the conference was at some point characterized by chaos and physical fighting.

His response couldn’t have been more different: “This was one of the most disciplined conferences we’ve had,” he said.

Far from the truth he said – he explained that it was just one delegate who was overzealous and had tried to grab the microphone from a fellow provincial delegate.

Mr Zuma said that the delegate was disciplined immediately and kicked out of the conference.