One of the reasons white businesspeople have so much affection for Mandela is that he allowed them to become richer than ever before. Dippenaar’s career is an illustrative case. He started a finance firm in 1977 with two partners and just $10,000 in capital. “It was uncomfortable being from a country that was regarded as the polecat of the world,” he recalls. After apartheid ended, Dippenaar’s firm rapidly expanded through a series of mergers and acquisitions, eventually creating FirstRand Group, now one of South Africa’s largest financial institutions, with $100 billion in assets under management. Dippenaar is now reportedly one of the country’s 12 richest men.

When I ask him whether he believes that Zuma will bring an end to business’s friendly understanding with the government, Dippenaar says he doesn’t “like prejudging” but adds a bit pointedly, “It’s a question of, Will sanity prevail?”

One evening during my visit to South Africa, I saw Zuma speak before Solidarity, a labor union headed by a former right-wing rabble-rouser that’s devoted to protecting the interests of white workers. Just by showing up at such an event, as few ANC politicians would, Zuma was sending a message that he is willing to talk to even the most unreconstructed elements of South African society. The speech took place inside a drab banquet hall in Centurion, a far-flung suburb of Johannesburg that felt less like a gated community than an armed camp. Except for the guest of honor and a few reporters, the audience was entirely white. The waitstaff was black. “Thank you very much for taking me home where I belong—with the workers,” Zuma said to the crowd.

Solidarity’s members are predominantly Afrikaners. Their history goes back to the Great Trek of the 1830s and ’40s, when thousands of white settlers migrated inland from the region around the Cape of Good Hope. They formed an intense attachment to the land, a sentiment that eventually manifested itself as the nationalist movement that instituted apartheid. Since apartheid’s abolition, many Afrikaners have come to see themselves as a despised minority. At the end of his speech, Zuma patiently answered a series of confrontational questions from union members who, evidently unappreciative of the irony, complained that the ANC government’s affirmative-action programs were racially discriminatory.

“South Africa belongs to all,” Zuma told the audience, to polite applause. “South Africa is your home, is my home.”

During dinner, a pair of gaudily dressed Afrikaner folksingers serenaded Zuma with traditional songs. At the end of the evening, white union officials presented the black ANC leader with an antique wagon chest and a family Bible that dated back to the Great Trek, which had culminated in the Battle of Blood River. During that conflict, the settlers wiped out a Zulu army, an event that directly led to the subjugation of Zuma’s ancestors. At ease with his old enemies, Zuma accepted the gift with an incandescent smile, savoring the reversal of fortune.