When a client posed the following question I decided to share it with you as the issue is topical and of great importance to all of us who live in South Africa. There appears to be a general consensus that South Africa will commence an economical backward slide should the answer to this judgement be ‘YES’, so the resulting information is of great interest.

Horary Chart

Herewith the question posed by the Querent: “Will Jacob Zuma win the ANC election and if so what is the future of South Africa?” 27 October 2007, 10.35PM, Johannesburg, South Africa. Before commencing with judgement, let us have a brief look at who Jacob Zuma is and why he instils this sense of foreboding in the majority of level headed South Africans and foreigners living within our borders.

The following extracts were taken from an article written by Alex Perry and published in Time Magazine on the 8th of August 2007.

• The front-runner to be South Africa’s next President is an unconventional candidate. Since 2005, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma has been sacked as Deputy President, tried and acquitted of rape and embroiled in a corruption scandal over defense contracts — which might yet come to court (Zuma maintains his innocence). He has somewhere between three and six wives (he refuses to confirm the exact number) and a total of 17 children by nine women. At rallies of his supporters, he sings the Zulu anthem: Bring Me My Machine(gun).
  
  
• The prospect of a Zuma presidency fills South Africa’s élite with dread. He is the target of the country’s most syndicated cartoon strip, Da Zuma Code, which depicts him as a ruthless dunderhead. Editorials and letters in the middle- class press paint Zuma as a potential African strongman in the mold of so much of postcolonial Africa to the North, with some white commentators advising selling up and leaving should he assume power.
  
  
• Jacob Zuma was born in the poor, sparsely populated area of Nkandla in the Eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal. His father, a policeman, died when he was 3 and his mother found work as a domestic servant in Durban. Zuma was working full-time by the age of 15. His elder brother was an ANC member, and at 17 Zuma joined too. The apartheid government banned the party in1960. In 1963, Zuma was arrested, convicted of trying to overthrow the government and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, which he served on Robben Island, the famous prison off Cape Town where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for most of his 27 years in jail. After his release, Zuma helped organize underground resistance to apartheid. In 1975, he fled South Africa for Swaziland, Mozambique and Zambia — eventually becoming the ANC’s intelligence chief.
  
  
• This straightforward tale of triumph over oppression and poverty accounts for much of Zuma’s appeal. He is plainspoken. He fought apartheid, he says, because “I was oppressed.” He is just as to-the- point on other subjects. He called same-sex marriages “a disgrace to the nation and to God” and boasted he used to “knock out” homosexuals as a boy. At his rape trial, he admitted having unprotected sex with his accuser, a 31-year-old woman he knew to be HIV positive then offering to marry her.
  
  
• Zuma’s supporters, mostly ANC voters disenchanted with their party’s failure to deliver wider prosperity, gathered in their thousands outside his trial. He has the official endorsement of the ANC’s powerful Youth League and the South African Communist Party, and the backing of the majority of leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). More recently, he became a figurehead for hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers who went on strike for several weeks in June and July. Strikers chanted Zuma’s name at several rallies and Zuma echoed their concerns, bemoaning a “widening gap between rich and poor.”
  
  
• But if Zuma attracts mass support, he outrages South Africa’s élite. Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu called it “inappropriate” for a presidential hopeful to have “casual sex without taking proper precautions in a country that is being devastated by the horrendous HIV/AIDS pandemic.” Mbeki went a step further, sacking Zuma as his Deputy President in 2005 when Zuma’s financial advisor was convicted of corruption related to defense contracts. More recently, Mbeki campaigned against the prospect of a Zuma presidency on the grounds that when “a member of the royal family” behaves like “a rascal … I can stand firm … and say: ‘This one cannot lead.’ Whatever is said, we do not want him.”
  
  
• Zuma’s appeal to party rank and file, on the other hand, cannot be discounted. At the funeral of ANC activist Adelaide Tambo in February, Mbeki said: “We may have forgotten that our movement has lived and led for as long as it has exactly because it is a movement of the people.” Zuma’s rivals may be more sharp-suited and sophisticated; their problem is that if any candidate for the leadership of South Africa can say he is of the people, it is Jacob Zuma. Let us now commence with judgement. I will insert as much information as possible and trust you will be able to follow my thought process and subsequent attainment of the judgement.
  
  
• My client is not South African and owns homes in various parts of the world. She spends the majority of her time in South Africa but does not consider it her true home. She has made large investments in South Africa and my deduction based on her question was that she was concerned about the future of South Africa in light of any changes affecting her investments adversely.
  
  
• Hence, we cannot use Lord 1 for her country instead we need to use Lord 9 (foreign countries).
  
  
• So, in this chart SA is Lord 9, Jupiter in dignity, in its triplicity, the term and fall of Mercury and the face of the Moon. We are not asked here to evaluate the current state of South Africa so further elaboration at this point is unnecessary.
  
  
• The present king, Thabo Mbeki, is Lord 6, Jupiter as above. We have turned the chart therefore we count 10 (house of kings) away from 9 (the foreign country) to locate the king of SA for this chart.
  
  
• Although the SA constitution does not allow Thabo Mbeki to serve a third term of office he can be voted in as head of the ANC and then try to change the constitution or to assert influence to elect a candidate of his choosing into the position.
  
  
• He is in his own celestial house (Jupiter rules Sagittarius) and is therefore well ensconced in his home at 18 degrees (the cusp is 5 degrees) which strengthens him considerably. If he were about to enter his own house, we might see that as him going home meaning defeat but this is not the case.
  
  
• We can override the usual rule here of the cadent 6th house being an accidental debility – he is in his own house, therefore strong.
  
  
• In a question of elections where one candidate is king, it is relevant to note the Part of Resignation and Dismissal. Contact, mainly conjunctions and oppositions to it or its dispositor, will help unseat him. Other aspects are minor testimony only.
  
  
• The Part of Dismissal is at 20Libra54. Jupiter is applying to an exact sextile to the Part and the dispositor of the Part, Venus, is 1 degree away from an exact square to Jupiter. Although both of these aspects constitute minor testimony, in all likelihood the king will be deposed and we have further testimony thereof - the Moon makes no immediate aspect to Jupiter and the future opposition is prohibited. More on that shortly.
  
  
• The Antiscion of Jupiter is at 11Capricron12. The Antiscion of Mars (another candidate, not Zuma)opposes Jupiter.
  
  
• The Moon is of extreme importance in horaries regarding elections. It is the natural ruler of the people and so signifies the electorate. If the Moon goes to aspect one of the significators, that candidate will win and this is so despite its receptions.
  
  
• The electorate which is the ANC itself for this specific election is the Moon in the sign of Venus, its own triplicity, term of Mars, face of Saturn and detriment of Mars. It is fast and is about to change sign into Gemini. Here it will be ruled by Mercury, be in the triplicity of Mercury, the term of Mercury, the face of Jupiter and the detriment of Jupiter. Antiscion is at 2Leo17.
  
  
• There are no major Fixed Stars to take into account.
  
  
• Based on the importance of the Moon, we are not going to do a synopsis on the receptions. At this stage who likes/hates who is not relevant. If the Moon is not making an applying aspect to either Thabo Mbeki or Jacob Zuma, neither of them will win so the feelings involved are unimportant.
  
  
• The Moon is making no applying aspect to Mercury (Zuma) and will only do so when it enters Gemini. It will apply to oppose Jupiter (Mbeki) when it is in Gemini but this is too far ahead and before it could do this it would square Saturn which is debilitated by being conjunct the S.Node (although separating it is going retrograde soon). So, even though the Moon currently loves Venus (another candidate) and will soon love Mercury (Zuma), the next aspect to be made will be with Saturn. If this means that the candidate signified by Saturn gets the vote then maybe we should try to see who Saturn is.
  
  
• We know that there are other nominees in play, as follows: Former Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale, ANC national chairman Mosiuoa Lekota, housing Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, ANC general secretary Kgalema Motlanthe, Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini- Zuma.
  
  
• Please note that the above information may have changed – nowhere could I find the exact list of nominees and some of these nominations appear to be based on hearsay. This has no effect on the judgement of the chart however.
  
  
• We do not have enough facts on the other candidates to ascertain who Saturn is. Unless one of these candidates was significantly older (Saturn) than any of the others which is not the case, we have no basis on which to make this identification.
  
  
• “If there were only two contenders and it were absolutely certain that they would both be contending - a situation like a boxing match, where both guys are in the ring - we would have to somehow split the two, no matter how little testimony there was for either of them winning (bad analogy, I know, as a boxing match can result in a draw). But in this case, which is still wide open, we cannot do this” – John Frawley.
  
  
• So, as I was not asked who would win the election we do not have to look any further. So, to answer the specific question posed by my client – will Jacob Zuma win the election in December and become head of the ANC – we must judge ‘NO’. The lack of evidence to suggest him winning it is sufficient to attain this judgement.
  
  
• We now have the second part of the question to answer. I did not look at the future of South Africa per se - the first part of the question being a ‘no’ did not match the second part of the question. I therefore approached it from a different perspective.
  
  
• If we look at a plain investment question for the Querent – so should she continue to invest in SA – SA is Jupiter in dignity but in the 6th and the Querent’s money is Lord 2 the Sun which is peregrine but angular. The Querent is the Moon which has dignity by exaltation and its Antiscion is in the 2nd showing her preoccupation with her money/assets. The Querent’s money loves Mars and is in the detriment of Mars. What is Mars? It is Lord 10, the foreign country’s (SA) money or moveable assets/resources. Mars loves the Querent (of course SA’s economy loves foreign investors), exalts Jupiter its country is in its own triplicity and face and in its own fall, so the assets of SA appear worse than they are but they are still bad (this is the current status).
  
  
• The Querent’s money is fixed in Leo, so there’s nothing to suggest anything cataclysmic happening to it, though it does go to Saturn which is unfavorable.
  
  
• There is nothing to support further investment, but neither is there any reason to panic. Lord 1 losing strength though is of concern but there is nothing too critical waiting to happen to it.
  
  
• The judgement regarding the Querent’s money and therefore the future of SA’s economy is that based on the state of her investments either Jacob Zuma will not win (as we have deduced above) or even if he does, the general assumptions of financial collapse are inaccurate. The Querent therefore has nothing much to worry about anyway.

This was the most interesting part of the judgement for me – that even if Jacob Zuma were to win or if debilitated Saturn wins, South Africa is not going to collapse in a heap of financial chaos. I think this provides hope and light for those of us who have more vested in this country than just assets. Financial deterioration is only the tip of the iceberg and the ensuing ramifications would result in further hardship and heartache for all of us who have our primary asset invested here – our hearts.

I wish all the readers of Aspects a safe and joyous festive season and await the outcome of the ANC election with great anticipation. Here’s to the closure of an interesting 2007 and the expectation of an astounding 2008!!

Jacqueline Brook, a qualified holistic health practitioner and physical fitness trainer, is a second year student at the Thorburn School of Astrology. she is also under the tutelage of John Frawley and is about to complete her horary course. She is currently establishing herself as a practising natal and horary astrologer. Contact her at