South African President Fathers 20th Child

Polygamist Jacob Zuma welcomed daughter before 3d marriage
By Marie Morris,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 31, 2010 4:11 PM CST
South African President Fathers 20th Child
South African President Jacob Zuma gestures at the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday Jan. 27, 2010.   (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

South African president Jacob Zuma became a father for the 20th time when a friend's daughter gave birth to a baby girl in October. Zuma, 67, later married his third wife and is planning a wedding to a fourth woman, neither of them the baby's mother, the Times of London reports. "That's my culture," Zuma said in a discussion of polygamy this month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, outraging both political opponents and AIDS activists.

"It does not take anything from me, from my political beliefs and everything, including the belief on the equality of women," continued Zuma, who has had a total of five wives. The mother of baby Thandekile Matina Zuma is 39-year-old Sonono Khoza, the daughter of Irvin Khoza, chairman of South Africa's 2010 World Cup Organizing Committee and a longtime friend of Jacob Zuma's. "No, we are not excited," Sonono Khoza's mother, Matina, told the Times of South Africa.
(More Jacob Zuma stories.)

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