(CNN) In March 2009, less than two months before Jacob Zuma assumed office as the fourth President of post-apartheid South Africa, the Dalai Lama's visa application to enter the country was denied. But if Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's second post-apartheid President, had sacrificed the values of Mandela's ruling African National Congress (ANC) on the altar of expediency and realpolitik, Zuma would end up doing far, far worse. Over the next nine years, President Zuma would allegedly treat the institutions of state as if they were his own private assets , to be stripped and siphoned off into bank accounts around the world. The answers are many, and most of them circle around the cliché that a country gets the President it deserves. Zuma had been many things, but as a president he had never been a uniter.

Source: CNN February 15, 2018 01:52 UTC