South Africa's and the ANC's presidencies were the heart of state power, fused around the person of an unparalleled, controversial yet commanding head of state and government. The ANC propelled Zuma into power with the twin tasks of rescuing the ANC from subjugation to state power under former president Thabo Mbeki, and ensuring that the many hungry elites beyond the Mbeki circle would get their chance to ‘eat’ – but the ANC got more than it had bargained for: domination by a powerful and president-centred faction. The party found itself in the hands of a strategic and shrewd president who could operate the organisation and present himself as being in control while bumbling his way past a phalanx of problems.

The state leg of the presidency expanded in the time of Zuma rule. Even so, it was the ANC's Chief Albert Luthuli House and Zuma's hold on ANC power that towered over the president's private office in the West Wing of the Union Buildings. And this is only part of the story of precarious political power in the time of the Zuma presidency. In essence, the ANC under Zuma has more power over the state, but the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance are fractured and under control of Zuma and his associates. Under Mbeki, the ANC had become an increasingly limp attachment to the state. The Zuma-ists reversed this and reinstated the ANC in charge. Few had imagined at the time of Zuma's election the extent to which this reversal would in due course demean the ANC.

The presidency of South Africa has to be considered in conjunction with the presidency of the ANC. Similarly, the power of Jacob Zuma can only be understood with the linked consideration of his potent KwaZulu-Natal ANC power base and his state-wide powers to make appointments and create positions. This chapter explores further the locus of formal and informal power in and around the president, and the trajectory towards the completion of the second Zuma term. It illuminates the tragedy of a powerful, often underestimated president who manipulated his way into and in power, found his way around obstacles in power, and pulled the ANC to a point from where it would be tough to recover.