South Africa to tighten rules on ex-leaders' foreign trips after Zuma-Gupta meeting

A photograph taken at an Indian temple last month has set off a chain reaction in South African politics. In the image: Jacob Zuma, the 84-year-old former president, standing beside Ajay Gupta, a businessman whose name has been synonymous with one of the country's most consequential corruption scandals. The picture was enough to prompt South Africa's foreign minister to recommend that parliament impose new restrictions on how former heads of state conduct themselves abroad.

The anger is rooted in history. A decade ago, the Gupta brothers—Ajay, Atul, and Rajesh—were accused of using their proximity to President Zuma to extract enormous wealth from the state and reshape policy in their favor. Both the Guptas and Zuma denied the allegations. But the damage to South Africa's institutions was real enough that it became a defining feature of Zuma's presidency. In 2018, as a judicial inquiry began, the family departed the country. By 2022, the commission investigating what became known as "state capture" had concluded that Zuma had systematically hired and fired ministers—people responsible for running the nation's economy—at the Guptas' direction.

The legal reckoning has been incomplete. Authorities dropped their arrest warrant for Ajay Gupta. His brothers, Atul and Rajesh, fled to the United Arab Emirates, where a court rejected South Africa's extradition request in 2023. The scandal that toppled a president thus ended not with closure but with dispersal: the accused scattered across continents, the wound left open.

Zuma himself has since been expelled from the African National Congress, the party he once led. He now heads the opposition uMkhonto we Sizwe party. His trip to India was undertaken in that capacity. Yet when the photograph emerged—showing him with Gupta at a temple, with South Africa's high commissioner to India also present—the reaction was swift and visceral. One minister said Zuma was showing the "middle finger" to his country. The high commissioner, Anil Sooklal, has since been recalled, though he denies any impropriety.

Foreign Affairs Minister Ronald Lamola used the moment to act. He has recommended to parliament and the president's office that new protocols be established for former heads of state traveling internationally. Under the proposed rules, such figures would be required to disclose full details of their trips in advance, allowing the government to assess potential reputational, political, diplomatic, and security risks before they depart.

This is not Zuma's first diplomatic misstep since leaving office. Last year, he visited Morocco and publicly endorsed that nation's claim to the disputed territory of Western Sahara—a position that directly contradicts South Africa's official stance. He traveled as MK leader but was photographed standing before the South African flag during his meeting with Morocco's foreign minister, blurring the line between his party role and his status as a former president. South Africa filed a formal diplomatic protest.

The new rules, if adopted, would represent an attempt to prevent such incidents from recurring. They would formalize what has become an informal problem: that a former president, no longer bound by the constraints of office, can still leverage his stature and history to complicate his country's foreign relations. Whether such protocols can actually constrain a figure of Zuma's prominence and determination remains to be seen.