JOHANNESBURG: Jacob Zuma’s hopes of becoming South Africa’s president were bolstered by the collapse of graft charges against him, but he still faces many hurdles in his quest for the country’s top job, analysts said on Thursday.

The populist politician’s left-wing supporters were thrilled by Judge Herbert Msimang’s decision on Wednesday to dismiss corruption charges against their hero, immediately demanding that President Thabo Mbeki reinstate him as his deputy and likely successor.

“Now that the charge has fallen flat on its face it is only fair that he be reinstated,” Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary-general of the powerful COSATU labour federation, said on Thursday.

But while Zuma broke into a victory boogie at a union meeting on Wednesday, analysts and newspaper commentators said his ascent to power ahead of party elections in late 2007 and a presidential poll in 2009 was far from assured.

“Based on the jubilation ... it would seem Jacob Zuma has already been elected as the new president,” Johannesburg’s Star newspaper said in an editorial. “But 15 months is an extraordinarily long time in politics.”

Political analysts said Zuma still faced the possibility that new corruption charges would be filed, which could leave him under a cloud of suspicion as the ruling African National Congress (ANC) readies for the 2007 meeting which will decide who will lead the party into the 2009 elections.

And Zuma’s image as a candidate of the left, key to his grassroots support but based on little policy evidence, will be tested in coming months as voters focus on what type of South Africa he might create.

“Zuma is the candidate who poses himself as a specific alternative to Mbeki. If he can make the right promises he would be able to swing support,” said Susan Booysen, a political scientist at the University of the Witwatersrand.

“But if he doesn’t come across with credibility, and with policies, people won’t give him blind trust. Zuma has created a space for debate, but now that space has to be filled.”—Reuters