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Andrew Trench and Bongani Siqoko gaze into the crystal ball and imagine a day in the life of President Jacob Zuma a year from now

WEDNESDAY morning, September 23, 2009, is one of those mornings that Pretoria is known for: A brisk, spring day with jacarandas exploding in every direction and the first rays of dawn kissing the lawns of the Union Buildings.

President Jacob Zuma gazes out over the gardens of this historic Herbert Baker complex; this grand building whose walls have housed the seat of power in South Africa since 1913, playing host to such figures as Hendrik Verwoerd and Nelson Mandela.

Now it is Zuma who sits in the Presidency, in the wood-paneled, genteel west wing of the Union Buildings.

Thabo Mbeki once ruled supreme from here until the events of last September, the echoes of which seem never to go away.

But ruminations on history and those who came before him are far from President Zuma’s mind this morning. Before him lies a Cabinet meeting and the pressures of high office have furrowed his brow.

In his mind he reviews the agenda that lies ahead.

First up is Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, and Zuma cannot help but smile at what he knows will come from her.

His sharp, passionate health minister is due to brief Cabinet on her ministry’s progress with some of the toughest challenges facing the Zuma administration.

He anticipates good news on the state’s rejuvenated HIV/Aids programme and anti-retroviral roll-out. Not unexpected progress considering what came before.

Since getting rid of Mbeki there has been a fundamental shift in state policy and Zuma still chuckles at the rich irony of Madlala-Routledge ascending to head the ministry from which she was once fired by no less than “Mr Denialist”, Mbeki himself. She is also due to update them on the ministry’s hospital revitalisation programme and the positive results coming from Frere Hospital in East London that the minister has made a pet project.

The President knows, however, that not all the reports from health will be good though. His government is battling some of the same issues as the old administration: They can’t find enough doctors or nurses – and they’re tied up in the courts fighting various interest groups resisting the formation of a National Health Insurance plan that will see the poor gaining access to private medical care.

Over on the television in his expansive office the education minister is being grilled – rather rudely, Zuma thinks – by Debora Patta of e.tv on his government’s plans to extend the school nutrition programme to high schools and on its recently announced science and maths intervention programme.

Patta’s barely concealed scepticism and contempt (she cites the collapse of the school food programme in the Eastern Cape) reminds the President to make a mental note to check in on the drafting of the media tribunal white paper.

There are also some uncomfortable questions about plans to extend free education to 60 percent of all schools and the problems this is causing in school funding as well as the scrapping of South Africa’s new mega-universities, only merged five years ago.

His thoughts are interrupted with a tap on the door as Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe arrives for their daily review.

The news coming in is not great. Since Mbeki loyalists split from the ANC a year ago, forming a revived United Democratic Front, there has been trouble all round.

The Western Cape, Eastern Cape, North West and KwaZulu-Natal were all lost to the ANC as the new opposition movement, with the UDF at its centre, reached a surprising election pact for the April elections.

The split has caused a number of problems. Local government around the country is moving like syrup on service delivery and councils are locked in conflict between the rival groups. Zuma feels the pressure mounting each day.

Not even the state’s multibillion- rand intervention with a state housing rescue plan has managed to unblock the bottlenecks and backlogs.

Zuma sometimes imagines Mbeki, now South Africa’s Ambassador to the United Nations, having a good laugh over how things have turned out.

Sometimes Zuma regrets the comments he made at that press conference last September when he spoke to South Africa after Mbeki’s removal.

He knew he had to commit South Africa to a sound and predictable economic policy – the country simply couldn’t afford another market upheaval.

The problem now, though, is trying to find a way to finance the programmes and policies that his administration has promised.

Finance Minister Trevor Manual, one of the few who remained from Mbeki’s Cabinet (and not because he actually liked Zuma, the President wryly reminds himself) had warned them of the problems that lay ahead.

As the President and his deputy absorb the state of play, the two cannot help but feel unsettled by the thought of the upcoming ANC National Executive Committee meeting where they are expected to be pressed on progress i n some key areas.

Zuma had hoped that his recently announced commission into the Reserve Bank’s existing inflation targeting policies would appease the Communist Party and Cosatu. What else did they expect him to do?

He also expects some hard questions about what his administration is doing about broadening social welfare grants, pension funding reform and raising child support grants for everyone up to the age of 18. Zuma is thinking he will invite his alliance colleagues to a formal briefing with Manuel one day so they can understand the bind he is in.

Who knew how little money South Africa actually had, the president fumes.

Zuma thinks about how different being president is to how he had imagined the job would be.

Even holding the highest office in the land has not rid him of the corruption investigation which has long haunted him.

The Scorpions may be long gone but since the National Prosecuting Authority’s successful appeal on Judge Chris Nicholson’s ruling, they have decided to recharge him. And since he had publicly promised to respect the courts and the justice system, there is little anyone can do about it legally.

Events will have to take their course.

Just then his private secretary buzzes him, reminding Zuma of his next appointment.

The president stifles a groan as the new minister of sport peeps around the door, wanting to tell him about his ideas for a single symbol for all national sports teams.

“Hello, Fikile ...,” says President Zuma.