Saki Macozoma, one of South Africa’s richest black men (worth an estimated $50 million, according to the Sunday Times, a South African news­paper), is emblematic of many of Zuma’s wealthy black opponents. Sitting in the airy, skylighted offices of Stanlib, the investment firm he runs in Johannesburg, he tells me about his arrest for “terroristic activities” in 1977 (organizing a student march) and the five years he served in Robben Island Prison, the heavily guarded fortress off the coast of Cape Town where Nelson Mandela was held for many years. Macozoma emerged from prison as a human rights activist, a socialist, and an ANC leader. But in 1996, he resigned a parliamentary seat to take the helm of South Africa’s national transportation company. After that, he started a private equity firm and amassed interests in the financial sector, including a significant stake in Standard Bank, South Africa’s largest financial institution, through the auspices of black economic empowerment.

Until recently, Macozoma retained a seat on the ANC’s national executive committee, the party’s top decision­making body, and he was often talked about as a possible future presidential contender. Then last year, during the ANC’s internal power struggle, Macozoma came out vocally against Zuma’s election as party leader, warning in an interview with the Financial Times of the “potential for a calamity” if Zuma prevailed.

After Zuma’s victory, Macozoma paid dearly. The new ANC leadership called for an investigation into a murky party fundraising scheme he was involved with, and a reported deal to buy a $1 billion stake in the cell-phone company Vodacom fell apart amid speculation that Macozoma and his partners—including a former national director of public prosecutions who oversaw criminal investigations of Zuma—had become politically radioactive.

“There are some people who are sore on both sides,” Macozoma says, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t believe that Zuma is the problem, per se. There are certain people in the Zuma camp who have certain ideas that to me sound strange.”

By that, Macozoma means not only the communists and the union activists but also a circle of shadowy confidants whose relationships with Zuma date back to his days as the ANC’s intelligence chief. One of them is Moe Shaik, reportedly Zuma’s closest adviser, though he holds no official title. A citizen of South Asian descent, Shaik was an ANC intelligence operative whose family has maintained a close relationship with Zuma throughout his rise. Shaik’s brother Schabir, a businessman, is currently serving a prison sentence for directing hundreds of thousands of dollars to Zuma, largely bankrolling the politician’s lifestyle, down to his car repairs and Armani suits.

Allegedly, Schabir parlayed this relationship into preferential treatment for a French arms manufacturer he represented, which was vying for a piece of a contract to supply frigates to the South African navy. The relationship formed the basis of a corruption indictment against Zuma, one of the two high-profile prosecutions he’s faced during the past four years. The other, involving a rape accusation by the 31-year-old daughter of a family friend, resulted in an acquittal, but not before Zuma, a former head of the South African National AIDS Council, told the court that he had tried to protect himself against contracting HIV after the encounter—which he claimed was consensual—by taking a shower.

Moe Shaik, jug-eared and heavy browed, with a clean-shaven head, meets me at a café in Pretoria, South Africa’s leafy capital. He tells me that the challenges Zuma faced had nothing to do with his positions or character but rather flowed from the financial interests of those he threatened. Zuma has promised to reform BEE, to make it more “broad-based,” though what that would mean in practice is vague. Speaking through a haze of pipe smoke, the presumptive president’s adviser tries to elaborate. “The approach of the crane lifting everyone up, it did not work,” Shaik says. “The weight of lifting everyone up was too heavy for the crane.” Zuma’s approach, Shaik says, would be to elevate society from below, as with a forklift: “The crane is not going to cause the change. The forklift is going to cause the change.”

Zuma joined the ANC as a young man, at a time when it was engaging in a sometimes violent struggle against South Africa’s white government. He served a decade-long prison sentence on Robben Island alongside Mandela. After his release, he became a leader of the movement’s armed wing, heading up its intelligence operations. When Mandela was freed and the ANC was legalized, Zuma laid down his weapons and became a successful politician, eventually winning the post of deputy president. It was only when his insider’s route to power was derailed by the French-arms scandal in 2005 that he embraced a populist approach. Under his leadership, the ANC has adopted “the creation of decent work for all South Africans” as its foremost economic goal.

In September 2008, Zuma further solidified his power after his corruption indictment in the arms bribery case was dismissed on a technicality. Shortly after his legal victory, Zuma’s allies deposed Mbeki in an intraparty coup and moved to disband the Scorpions, the special police unit that had investigated Zuma’s corruption case. Then an appeals-court judge reinstated the criminal charges against Zuma, creating an embarrassing legal muddle. Because of the strength of Zuma’s support inside the ANC, and the ANC’s within the country, Zuma remains all but certain to win the presidency—and equally sure to remain a walking constitutional crisis.

But the mounting discontent Zuma faces is not all of his own making. During the past year, the global recession has driven down the value of the rand, South Africa’s currency, while a destabilizing electricity shortage has caused blackouts and disrupted industry. A series of high-profile killings has heightened a national panic about crime. (South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world.) Within the affluent classes, party chatter now revolves around offshore bank accounts and emigration plans. White business leaders, acutely aware of their precarious position, tend to be very closemouthed about current politics. They are eager to impress a journalist with their devotion to change, and they speak of Mandela especially in worshipful terms. “Mandela was a statesman,” says Laurie Dippenaar, a white financier. “And there’s a big difference between politicians and statesmen.”