Queen Victoria was known as the "Grandmama of Europe", partly because of her long reign (1837-1901) and partly because so many of her children married into other royal families. Perhaps it is time for us to refer affectionately to President Jacob Zuma as the "Father of the Nation", following reports that he has been blessed with his 20th child. Of course, Victoria had only nine children, but then she was married only once.
Zuma does seem to have this capacity to make people feel good, while remaining cheerfully unconcerned by what anyone might say and think about him. It is a useful combination of qualities in a politician - to be both engaging and thick-skinned. The sun seems to shine most of the time in his presidency, regardless of what is happening in the country.
Perhaps, then, it is time to restore the purely ceremonial position of head of state that was abolished by P W Botha in the early 1980s. Die Groot Krokodil combined the offices of prime minister and president into a new executive presidency, partly to feed his own greed for power and partly to accommodate his disastrous tricameral constitution. Thus was lost the tradition of the state president (and before that the governor general, and before him the British monarch) being the representative of the nation rather than of the government of the day.
Zuma does that sort of thing rather well. He is a natural entertainer and good with crowds, large or small. Not many leaders would risk public song-and-dance acts, but he carries them off. He seems equally at ease with rural villagers and hard-bitten delegates at the World Economic Forum. Even Zuma's bitter political opponents concede that in Davos last week, he was a persuasive ambassador for the country.
Like a good constitutional monarch, he steers away from awkward policy debates and uncomfortable choices; he seems to have no political vision or views of his own, but appears to be a good listener. Like US president Franklin D Roosevelt, he has the art of making everyone think that he agrees with them. This makes argument and unpleasantness difficult to sustain, while causing executive actions to dam up dangerously.
That is why we expect nothing more than vagueness when Zuma gives the traditional state of the nation address next week in parliament. His idea of a break with the past, a bold gesture, is represented in his decision to move the address to the evening. It is typical of the man - he is concerned with appearance, not substance.
It's hard to imagine how Zuma might persuade us, even if he was inclined to try, that he is a president with a sense of direction and purpose, and a firm executive grip. Looking at the big picture, he is unlikely to clear up the confusion over who is in charge of economic policy, simply because he almost certainly doesn't know. If he tries to get down to practicalities, he runs the risk of making promises that will never be kept (remember the 500 000 jobs that would be created?) or repeating targets that become meaningless as they are missed. Thabo Mbeki's state of the nation addresses were often described as "workmanlike" because he liked to focus on a list of things that government was doing - yet, apart from fiscal and monetary management, the Mbeki administration also failed spectacularly in meeting even simple targets.
Twenty years to the week after President F W de Klerk announced the imminent release of Nelson Mandela from prison, Zuma is unlikely to suddenly crack the whip on feuding within the ANC, and between it and its partners. Open and disrespectful disputes in the alliance have become the norm. Mandela's assertion on his release that he remained a "disciplined member" of the ANC now seems quite bizarre. Is there still such a thing as a disciplined ANC member?
For months now, the organisation's real energy has been diverted to internal bickering, while its governance of SA increasingly seems merely ceremonial - a role for which, as we have pointed out, Zuma is eminently suitable.
