And here I thought this man was so modern (by South African standards) when all I knew about him was that he was the first South African president to acknowledge HIV.
But Zuma is not, as I would have imagined, the darling of HIV/AIDS activists: that community has been criticizing his polygamist lifestyle as a bad example in a country that has some of the highest rates of HIV in the world.
The argument being, I suppose, that polygamy officially sanctions a (one-sided) multiple-partner lifestyle. If one wife turned out to be HIV positive, she would infect all.
The validity of that argument aside, call me a zenophobe, but there’s still just the simple weird factor of polygamy.
The South African president in fact has 3 first ladies; he married the 3rd today. Zuma would have had 5 wives, but he divorced one (one of his cabinet members) in 1998, and another killed herself after bearing 5 of his children.
Zuma has a total of 19 children, by current and former wives, and with women to whom he has never married. Zuma is currently engaged to at least one other woman.
Check it out yourself, via the Times Online >>
