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You have to hand it to the irrepressible Jacob Zuma. Four years ago he was sacked as South Africa's vice-president in humiliating circumstances after his financial adviser was sent to prison for soliciting bribes on his behalf. A year later he was tried for raping a family friend nearly half his age whom he knew to be HIV-positive. Though acquitted, he has been persistently ridiculed both for his apparent ignorance about the AIDS plague that has devastated his country and for his behaviour. He was endlessly undermined by Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's president for most of the post-apartheid era, who sensed a populist rival. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) recently suffered a bad split, with a chunk breaking off to form a black-led opposition that seemed determined to do Mr Zuma down. This former herd-boy has been sneered at by many of his more lettered compatriots, black as well as white, for his lack of sophistication. Yet Mr Zuma has the last laugh: following the ANC's election victory, Parliament will shortly make him president of Africa's most dynamic country.

When it came to the vote, in an admirably free and entirely fair election, Mr Zuma's party achieved the sort of landslide — 66 per cent of votes cast on a turnout of 77 per cent — that most democratically elected leaders elsewhere in the world, not to mention the rest of Africa, can only dream of. At a time of growing economic anxiety, it matches the ANC's score when Nelson Mandela stepped down in his heyday in 1999. Mr Zuma is not just a gritty survivor. He is a remarkable communicator who can charm people of quite different stripes into believing he is on their side. At least in electoral terms, he is a stellar politician.

Will he now confound the doubters? The worst feature of the ANC's recent rule has been corruption in its ranks and the party's growing tendency to conflate its own interests with those of the state. Mr Zuma has not been immune to this tendency. He has hinted at curbing the independence of the judiciary. Though never convicted in court, he has hardly been viewed as a paragon of probity. Too many of his ANC friends have rated loyalty to their party — and to dodgy party pals — above their duty to the poor masses who elected them.

Mr Zuma's choice of cabinet will offer clues. There are worries in business circles that he may drop or lose the country's durable and respected finance minister, Trevor Manuel. It would be a good sign if he were retained. Better still if Mr Zuma found ways of demonstrating that South Africa's financial reputation does not rest on the shoulders of one man.

On paper, it looks good that the ANC failed to win more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, which would have let it alter the constitution and behave as if South Africa were a one-party state in the making. But that danger persists: Mr Zuma could yet cajole a bunch of parliamentarians from minnow parties, elected by proportional representation, into voting for any change the ANC wants.