Two years ago, under the headline 'Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid', a South African newspaper warned its readers that Jacob Zuma represented the greatest threat to the country's prosperity and rule of law since the end of apartheid.
In terms almost unanimously adopted by the country's mainstream media when writing about Mr Zuma - at least until his election this week as president of the ruling African National Congress - the Mail & Guardian editorial called him 'a populist rabble-rouser' who, 'because of question marks over his personal integrity' was 'not qualified to be the country's first citizen'.
The previous week in October 2005, a mob of Zuma loyalists outside a court in Durban, where Mr Zuma faced his first set of fraud and corruption charges, which have since been dismissed, provided 'a clear snapshot of what a Jacob Zuma presidency would be like'.
This would be a country whose courts would be intimidated by thugs, its economy run to ruin by trade unions, and government largesse dished out to cronies and family.
With a failing economy leaning heavily on its northern border, such images resonate with foreboding in South Africa and, since Mr Zuma's victory on Tuesday, media there have been speculating, to quote one headline, 'Are we Zimbabwe?'
No, we are not, according to Steven Friedman, who is probably South Africa's most perceptive political commentator, writing, as it happens, in the same newspaper on Thursday. 'In no post-independence African country has a sitting president been peacefully and democratically defeated by his own party,' according to Friedman.
