Johannesburg — LONGTIME critics of African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma's supposed leftist populism have recently been forced to eat their words.

Zuma turns out to have robust conservative attitudes concerning almost every touchstone social and economic issue, including shoot-to-kill policing, the proper place of women in society, ethnic political mobilisation, homosexuality and labour market reform.

Now Zuma has been gushingly endorsed by one of President Thabo Mbeki's most important former allies from international business. Ivan Fallon is today UK CE of Tony O'Reilly's Independent News & Media, but between 1994 and 2002 he ran O'Reilly's South African newspaper empire.

In a recent prominent article in the London Independent, entitled Jacob Zuma: President in Waiting, Fallon glowingly detailed Zuma's recent whirlwind visit to the UK capital. He described business people and politicians "almost standing in line" to see the new ANC leader.

"A group of South African businessmen representing wealth running into tens of billions", he claimed, "fought to be in the same room as Zuma."

Fallon also set out some of the qualities that equip Zuma for the state presidency. The president-in-waiting wore a "sober suit and tie" rather than "the Zulu leopard skins in which he has been widely pictured", defying Fallon's apparent expectation that he would stroll round the West End in traditional attire.

He was equally impressed that Zuma could speak "perfectly grammatical English" with "a less pronounced accent than either Mr Mbeki or Mr Mandela".

As to the corruption charges Zuma faces, Fallon highlighted "widespread accusations" that they were "driven personally by Mr Mbeki seeking to destroy a rival".

He commented that a judge last year "contemptuously threw out an ill-prepared (corruption) case which was also seen as politically inspired".

In passing, Fallon took a vicious swipe at his boss's former friend, Thabo Mbeki, whom he described as "reclusive and isolated".

O'Reilly's right-hand man continued that "the white population, fearful of Zuma a year ago, now loves him". Senior Afrikaners, he claimed, "have hailed him as the great hope not just of SA but of the whole region, and in private talk of him as even better than Mr Mandela and capable of taking their beloved country into new and sunlit uplands".

Fallon eventually arrived at the real crux of the matter, which was Zuma's promise "to continue the widely praised economic policies which have caused the economy to boom in recent years, and to keep the same economic team in place if they will agree to serve".

It is little surprise that Zuma has settled on continuity in economic and social policy.

Like Mbeki he was an implacable ideological enemy of the left's key exile leaders Joe Slovo and Chris Hani, and always discounted the autonomous historical achievements of the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the United Democratic Front (UDF).

The ANC's relationship with domestic trade unions was a point of weakness, Zuma told Howard Barrell in 1989, because the apartheid regime infiltrated spies into the unions in order that they could then make their way into the all-important ANC "mother body".

As for the UDF, it "did not emerge out of nothing" as a creation of domestic activists. "We (the exiles) began to work for it, and from 1978 to 1982 it was formed. You can imagine how many years we took until we had this political explosion, and only then people say, Jesus Christ, something has happened."

If Fallon's endorsement has reassured the business classes, Zuma's recent emergence as a national spiritual leader may soon engender trust among the broader population. Few South Africans can have overlooked the ANC president's growing resemblance to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

The two venerable philosophers share a trademark shaved dome, enigmatic spectacles, and an extraordinary serenity in the face of relentless persecution -- in Zuma's case allegedly by the Scorpions.

Minor shoot-to-kill blemishes notwithstanding, Zuma -- just like His Holiness the Tibetan Wish Fulfilling Gem -- has always been a peace-seeker.

He prudently engaged in secret talks with the National Intelligence Service in 1989, even while he was encouraging ordinary cadres to lay down their lives in insurrectionary struggle.

The Dalai Lama's 1989 Nobel Peace Prize citation could easily, in a more just world, have been Zuma's own: "He has advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people."

His Holiness modestly likes to say. "I am just a simple Buddhist monk", while in reality he is an acknowledged global authority on the theory of spiritual reincarnation.

Pastor Zuma likewise modestly avers that "I am just a little herd boy from Nkandla". However, his ability to reinvent himself -- inside the same physical body and within a single human life span -- makes him the world's greatest practitioner of the art of political reincarnation.

Butler teaches public policy at UCT.