President Jacob Zuma

South Africa gained its third first lady on Monday when President Jacob Zuma married Tobeka Madiba, his fifth marriage and third concurrent spouse. With another fiancee in the wings and rumors about a possible future engagement, the country may have five or more first ladies before Zuma's presidency is over. Zuma's polygamy sits uneasily with the ruling party's commitment to gender equality and has been criticized by women's rights and AIDS activists. But despite the disquiet in some quarters, Monday's wedding passed without media controversy.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa's ruling African National Congress on Tuesday defended a controversial decision to allow the broadcast on television of a video of an unsmiling Nelson Mandela, looking frail, pallid and uncomfortable, as people snapped flash photos of him when President Jacob Zuma and other ANC luminaries visited him at his house. Mandela, South Africa's first black president, was recently hospitalized with pneumonia and is recovering at home under medical supervision.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The health of former South African President Nelson Mandela has improved, according to South African officials who said he is in much better shape than he was a week ago when he was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. “President Nelson Mandela continues to make steady improvement in hospital,” said a statement by Mac Maharaj, spokesman for President Jacob Zuma. “His doctors say he continues to respond satisfactorily to treatment and is much better now than he was when he was admitted to hospital.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa's former president, Nelson Mandela, has been discharged from the hospital after 10 days undergoing treatment for pneumonia,  officials said Saturday. Mandela's discharge was a huge relief for South Africans, after the anti-apartheid hero was hospitalized with breathing difficulties last month. His late-night admission alarmed South Africans, who revere Mandela for his role in fighting apartheid and ushering in a period of reconciliation after the first democratic vote in 1994.

South African President Jacob Zuma announced Sunday that he was HIV-negative as his government rolled out a major AIDS prevention and treatment campaign. Zuma was criticized in 2006 by AIDS activists and other groups uring his rape trial after he admitted having unprotected extramarital sex with a family friend half his age. He was acquitted of the rape charges. After he became president last year, opposition leader Helen Zille said his testimony showed he had put the health of his wives at risk.

As South African runner Caster Semenya returned home Tuesday to a hero's welcome, President Jacob Zuma chastised the International Assn. of Athletics Federations over gender tests carried out on the athlete and declared there was no way she would be stripped of her gold medal in the women's 800-meter world championship. Thousands of people came to celebrate the 18-year-old Semenya's return at O.R. Tambo International Airport -- and to vent their anger at what they see as her ill treatment.

South African police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters demanding improved services and more jobs, in one of the biggest challenges to President Jacob Zuma since he took office. Thousands marched in Siyathemba township in a show of anger, saying they would escalate demonstrations if local officials from the ruling African National Congress failed to deliver on their promises. The violence increased uncertainty after a wave of strikes. The unrest also undermined South Africa's hope of showing a positive image before the soccer World Cup.

South Africa's governing African National Congress said party President Jacob Zuma would be its candidate in 2009 national elections despite his pending trial on charges of corruption, money laundering, fraud and racketeering. The decision sets the scene for a showdown between the party and prosecutors. Zuma's allies claim he is the victim of a political vendetta. Zuma, a 65-year-old former guerrilla leader, is supposed to go on trial in August. He is accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the French company Thint to stop investigations of multibillion-dollar arms contracts.

Re "In South Africa, paralysis at the top," Dec. 3 Several years ago, I read Nelson Mandela's inspiring autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom," and Dominique Lapierre's beautiful ode to the birth of a post-apartheid South Africa, "A Rainbow in the Night. " Recently, I finished Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer's "No Time Like the Present," a novel set in post-apartheid South Africa concerning a mixed-race couple, former companions in "the struggle. " I am currently reading Douglas Foster's "After Mandela.

After Mandela The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa Douglas Foster Liveright: 608 pp., $35 What a pleasant surprise to encounter a book that actually looks beyond the surface of South Africa's by now well-known story. We've read so many accounts of the miraculous transformation of the hideous apartheid state into the rainbow democracy and, in the nearly two decades since that happened, of the flies in the ointment that have marred the fairy tale.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The health of former South African President Nelson Mandela has improved, according to South African officials who said he is in much better shape than he was a week ago when he was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. “President Nelson Mandela continues to make steady improvement in hospital,” said a statement by Mac Maharaj, spokesman for President Jacob Zuma. “His doctors say he continues to respond satisfactorily to treatment and is much better now than he was when he was admitted to hospital.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Nelson Mandela was readmitted to a hospital after a worrying recurrence of the lung infection he suffered in December, the South African presidency announced Thursday. It was the third time Mandela, known affectionately to South Africans by his clan name, Madiba, has been hospitalized since December. The unexpected late-night admission rang alarm bells for many. South Africa's first black president went into a hospital in Pretoria just before midnight.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-- South Africa's Nelson Mandela, who was spending Christmas in the hospital recovering from serious illness, was in good spirits and looking much better, President Jacob Zuma said Tuesday. He said Mandela immediately greeted him, shouting out Zuma's clan name, Nxamalala. Zuma visited Mandela, along with Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, and other members of the Mandela family. “We found him in good spirits. He shouted my clan name, Nxamalala, as I walked into the ward!

JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa's elder statesman, Nelson Mandela, will spend Christmas in the hospital, with authorities announcing that doctors have no plans to discharge the former president. Mandela, 94, South Africa's first black president, has been hospitalized since Dec. 8, his longest stay since he was released from prison in 1993. He originally was hospitalized for a lung infection but also has had surgery for gallstones. Authorities have offered scant day-to-day information about Mandela's illness.

BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa - President Jacob Zuma, who has come under criticism as an ineffective leader of South Africa, was reelected Tuesday for a second term as head of the ruling African National Congress. After the party conference vote, Zuma, a controversial figure who has faced numerous scandals, including the use of public money for renovations to his house and corruption charges that were inexplicably dropped in 2009, called for unity and belted out a song. Delegates clad in made-in-China ANC outfits sang, danced, stomped and videorecorded one another with their cellphones.

Re "In South Africa, paralysis at the top," Dec. 3 Several years ago, I read Nelson Mandela's inspiring autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom," and Dominique Lapierre's beautiful ode to the birth of a post-apartheid South Africa, "A Rainbow in the Night. " Recently, I finished Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer's "No Time Like the Present," a novel set in post-apartheid South Africa concerning a mixed-race couple, former companions in "the struggle. " I am currently reading Douglas Foster's "After Mandela.

President Jacob Zuma will be "more vocal" than his predecessor about bringing Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's party to task for harassing rival politicians, a South African official said Wednesday. Attacks by Mugabe's followers on activists of a rival party, which is now in a strained coalition in Zimbabwe, "are a hindrance to progress" in the impoverished country, said Gwede Mantashe, secretary- general of South Africa's ruling African National Congress. Zuma is going to Zimbabwe today, his first visit to the neighboring country as president.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Political analyst Mark Gevisser described South African President Jacob Zuma's term in one word: "Disastrous. " He's "the worst leader the ANC has ever had. He's a lost cause. He merely fights to save his own skin and to stay out of jail," another analyst, Justice Malala, wrote in October. The South African president is under such vitriolic attack within and without his African National Congress party that the Communist Party in his home province called for a law to protect his "dignity" and restrain his critics.

After Mandela The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa Douglas Foster Liveright: 608 pp., $35 What a pleasant surprise to encounter a book that actually looks beyond the surface of South Africa's by now well-known story. We've read so many accounts of the miraculous transformation of the hideous apartheid state into the rainbow democracy and, in the nearly two decades since that happened, of the flies in the ointment that have marred the fairy tale.