Most journalists speak of how many times they have attended his press conferences only to come away with very little if anything - to write about.
His name is as cryptic as he is. He was named Gedleyihlekisa at the same time his brother was named Ngekengithule, after their father constructed a sentence "Ngeke ngithule umuntu engigedla engihlekisa" (I can't keep quiet when someone pretends to love me with a deceitful smile) - which he broke in two to name his sons.
The deputy president is described by his friend of 47 years, Johannes "Past-Four" Phungula, as a man of "bravery and narrow escapes".
Phungula, a former exile, describes an incident in which Zuma escaped being arrested. Zuma had slipped illegally into the country and was travelling on a bus on his way to Swaziland.
A white policeman stopped the bus and Zuma concluded that his hour of reckoning had come. But he remained composed.
"I had to decide whether to react to this or not. If they (the police) were looking for me, they would be the special branch," he said.
There was a sudden silence in the bus as the policeman looked around. Zuma had to suppress his fear by continuing to talk to the girl he was flirting with, raising his voice in a desperate attempt to hide his concern.
It turned out that the police officer had come to pick up his two undercover colleagues planted on the bus. Only when they left did Zuma breathe a sigh of relief, happy to escape from the lion's mouth.
"I had to appear normal," he said.
He mastered the art of escaping probing questions at a very young age and he appears to have perfected it over the years. His new tack when asked about his personal life or his political career is simple but clever: "Your question is important, but 1 will talk about that in my book, because I wouldn't want an unfinished story about me."
His intellect was first put to the test in the grazing fields of Maphumulo, his mother's birthplace near KwaDukuza. on the KwaZulu Natal North Coast, where he tended to the cattle.
"I used to look after them very well. That was the first time I was praised for a job well done," he recalls.
Little did shepherd Zuma know that those grazing fields of Maphumulo were the first in an intelligence career that has turned him into a man regarded as one of the most "secretive" brains the ANC has produced.
His father died when he was four, which meant that he missed the opportunity to go to school and had to live a nomadic life travelling from his birthplace of Nkandla in Zululand, to Maphumulo and Durban, where his mother worked and lived in a shack in Cato Manor.
His father's death and "my mother having to look after us" forced Zuma to do odd jobs early in his youth to supplement the negligible income of his mother, then a domestic worker.
He fought an uphill battle against illiteracy, nagging those pupils coming back from school "to show me how these things are done".
"It was difficult because no one was keen to sit down with me and explain, but I used to be a pain," Zuma says. His cousin, then Maria Bhengu, now MaBhengu Gcaba, who had a Standard 4 education, came to his rescue, agreeing to take him for night lessons.
Gcaba remembers the smile on Zuma's face on his first day at night school in 1955. His smile and laugh are nothing new to Gcaba: "Sometimes there would be disturbances at the school because it was at night, but when the boys were asked what had happened, Gedle, as we used to call him, would just giggle as he still does even today."
Sinelabani Bhengu was Zuma's classmate in Sub B at night school. She speaks of Zuma as a student who was hungry for knowledge and she helped him to catch up with school work as he was among those in the class of 12 pupils who did not attend day lessons.
The night school, where Zuma went as far as Sub B, had long ceased to operate when the Durban influence of ANC politics overtook his quest for education. He joined the ANC in 1958, having attempted in vain at the age of 14. His cousin, Inkosi Vusumbango Zuma, then a chief at Nxamalala, tells the story of how he and his people reacted to the news that the young Zuma had been arrested for ANC activities in 1963. He was unaware that Zuma was involved in the ANC after it was banned.
Zurna was arrested in Zeerust on his way to exile with 52 other cadres and was convicted of conspiring to overthrow the state. He was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment and was released in 1973.
The mystery that followed Zuma's escape from South Africa immediately after his wedding to his first wife in 1975 is still remembered his old cousin, now a retired chief.
"We heard that he was last seen in a white car in Pietermaritzburg. We were also told by a magistrate that Jacob was speaking over the radio in Tanzania.
"There were helicopters and police at Nxamalala, all searching for this Jacob. Buthelezi then came to power, saying he would not take independence for KwaZulu. until Mandela. was released and Zuma and other exiles returned."
They later heard, in about 1990, that a "boer called De Klerk" had released Mandela. and wanted to talk to Mangosuthu Buthelezi about violence between the ANC and the IFP
"Zuma then re-appeared, preaching peace with (then IFP chairman Frank) Mdlalose," the old man tells the story as he knows it, often interrupted by an irritating cough.
Among the successes Zuma is credited with is bringing peace to the once-strife- tom KwaZulu. Natal province. Zuma finds joy in talking about peace, a subject so close to his heart that he urges people to treasure it
"It is a reminder to the province that never shall we go back to conflict again," said Zuma in an interview at King's House in Durban.
Few know what the source of Zuma's strength is. His critics attribute it to his low, 'secretive' profile and his intelligence background, which they say predisposes him to holding back information. Zuma contests this, saying the transparency to which the ANC is committed is relative and not absolute. His former teacher Gcaba attests to Zuma's secretiveness, remembering how he avoided questions about his whereabouts after his return from Robben Island.
"He came here to thank me for teaching him 'izimpukane' (vowels), but when I wanted to know where he had been hiding, he just laughed and said, 'Don't ask me about that. Here is wild sugar cane, cousin. Let's eat'," says Gcaba.
She rises as she speaks with pride: "No other teacher but me can say, without fear, that I stood in a night-school classroom and taught the deputy president how to read and write. 1 wish he had continued. He was such a bright student.
"He came here one day in a helicopter and when 1 greeted him, his hands were so warm and soft. I told him that each time I saw a helicopter when he was away I would think of him.
"I told him how I wished I were up there in the sky like a helicopter to see where he was hiding. When I would say this to his wife, MaKhumalo, she would break into tears," says Gcaba.
During Zuma's time in prison and in exile, Gcaba was one of the people in his village who would comfort MaKhumalo through the long, lonely years without her husband.
Article from Saturday Argus, 11 September 1999