It?s a lot easier to like someone who you already felt you would like, than it is to end up liking someone you were sure you would not like at all.

That is the most profound part of the experience I took away from interviewing the president of the ANC and arguably, but pretty surely, our next state president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma.

I had wondered on the plane if for some reason the interview would be cancelled and my feeling of impending doom was justified the minute I got off the plane from Cape Town and turned my cellphone back on. Within a minute, Zuma?s office called to inform me the president had fallen ill with flu and needed to go home on doctor?s orders to rest.

In his own home

I sighed at the thought of having to get off one plane and get straight back onto another heading home empty-handed without my cover story. To my surprise however the ANC media liaison was not asking for a cancellation but merely a postponement and change of location. The interview was changed from Luthuli House that afternoon to the following morning at Zuma?s house in Forest Town, the leafy well-to-do suburb behind the Johannesburg Zoo.

The chance to interview Zuma in his own home was too good an opportunity to pass up and with haste I arranged accommodation and some overnight necessities.

My colleague, Sibulele Siko, the editor of Black Business Quarterly, and myself were greeted by the ANC Head of Research and their media liaison. The house is a beautiful face-brick home with a manicured garden. We were shown into the lounge area, where the TV was booming out MTV Base and everyone sat down to wait for our interviewee?s arrival. Whilst making small talk and tapping my feet to the heavy rap tunes coming from the box, I stretched my neck to take in the visible home around me. Zuma may have a bevy of wives but his home is most certainly his castle, it is stylishy rugged with leather couches below African art and Zulu shields adorning the walls. I liked it.

Apologies from JZ

Enter Jacob Zuma, dressed in tracksuit pants, a jersey and a pair of slippers. A far cry from the manicured suits we have become used to witnessing him in. He greets us warmly and profusely apologised for the change in plans and his illness. This struck a chord with me as I have interviewed many people who have considered themselves far too important to say sorry for keeping one waiting for hours on end, Zuma seemed sincere and was not above an apology. It was dutifully accepted and noted.

We were lead through to the dining room table occupying a corner of a central hall where a spiral staircase ascended upstairs. There was the pleasant hustle and bustle of his daughters and grandchild upstairs, the latter who frequently shouted down for ubabamkhulu?s attention. Not once during the hour and a half interview, did Zuma scold her or ask for her to be taken away; instead he gave her the odd smile in recognition of her requests to be noticed.

This interview was not going to be about the corruption allegations, Scorpions or Schabir Shaik. Subjects I found more than adequately covered by my colleagues in the dailies and weekend newspapers and frankly subjects I had grown tiresome of. I was eager to get under the skin of Jacob Zuma, and get to know the man in other ways.

These are the frank words of Jacob Zuma.

On the next page, Zuma reveals his feelings on Mbeki, Mugabe and the media.