We admit our grave unease at the election as president of the African National Congress (ANC) of Jacob Zuma, a man of whom Archbishop Desmond Tutu says most South Africans would be ashamed to have as their leader.

Indeed, populist politics, as is so often the case, has trumped deep principle. What is now at stake for the ANC, as well as the broader South African society, is to ensure that the very democracy on whose back Mr. Zuma rode to power is not undermined, and that populism does not displace rational economics.

Despite the grand post-election congress speeches, this will be a difficult call, demanding a delicate act of political cohabitation for the next 18 months between the two men, whose bitter contest badly split the ANC - Mr. Zuma and the state president, Thabo Mbeki. Perhaps not since the late 1950s, when several members left to form the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), has the ANC faced such trauma.

Now, however, the stakes are higher. The ANC is no longer only a liberation movement. It now holds state power in a country that is influential as an economic and geopolitical power in Africa and a moral force in the world. And therein lies the concern over Mr. Zuma, who, assuming he is not convicted of corruption before then, is likely to become South Africa's president when Mr. Mbeki's current term ends in 2009.

There are good reasons for these fears. In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Zuma's victory - he took 61 per cent of the delegates' vote - the head of South Africa's National Prosecuting Agency warned of the imminent resuscitation of corruption charges against the ANC leader.

Those charges relate to a multibillion-dollar arms purchase deal involving the French firm, Thales International, from which Mr. Zuma's former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, sought to secure payment, ostensibly for Mr. Zuma. Shaik is currently serving a 15-year jail term over the issue.

Mr. Zuma was last year acquitted of raping a young HIV-positive house guest. But he remains tarnished by what many consider his chauvinistic statement against women during the trial and his cavalier attitude towards HIV/AIDS.

The prospect of having a president who could go to jail for graft and who had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman but claimed to have showered to prevent catching the disease, appeared not to have worried the vast majority of ANC delegates. Nor are they likely to deter South African voters who, in the absence of any real opposition, will endorse the ANC candidate.

So, Mr. Zuma has already won the real election, his defeat of Mr. Mbeki for the leadership and his right to be the nominee for the presidential poll. He won because, as is the way of populists, he has promised a new bottom-up political inclusiveness and change in the material position of black South Africans, who have not made the expected strides in post-apartheid South Africa. Mr. Mbeki's perceived aloofness did not help his cause.

South Africa has three points of concern. One, that Mr. Mbeki is entering a lame-duck presidency, robbing him of the capacity for effective action. Then there is the question whether under Mr. Zuma, South Africa can maintain its moral compass. Critical, too, is whether Mr. Zuma, in flights of fancy, will squander the country's economic stability.