ANC picks Zuma despite charges
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.
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