For an African freedom fighter, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, whose middle name can be translated as “a person who eats you up while he’s smiling at you,” bears an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump. He rose through the political ranks and won Mandela’s affection by expertly consolidating his base of conservative Zulu supporters—the largest ethnic group in the country—with his son-of-the-soil charm. He became notorious for his unchecked and opportunistic philandering. And he relied on handouts of cash from shady businessmen to keep himself afloat. Forward and friendly, he looked a bit like a cat who has been found with his face in the cream and, instead of backing away, invites you to join him.

By the time the Guptas had met him, in 2002, Zuma was deputy president of South Africa. A “conservative traditionalist,” according to one former official, Zuma acquired five wives (in addition to an ex-wife) and has 23 kids. He also lived beyond his means, writing dud checks and refusing to pay his taxes. Strapped for cash, he received interest-free loans from Schabir Shaik, a South African Indian businessman, who engineered an annual bribe for Zuma from a French arms company. In 2005, Shaik was found guilty of having a corrupt relationship with Zuma and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Zuma, facing corruption charges of his own, was forced out of office.

THE FAMILY’S MANSION WAS LITTERED WITH KITSCHY STATUES, ITS BATHROOM FIXTURES DETAILED IN GOLD.

Then, in a revelation that seemed to doom any chance of a political comeback, the daughter of an A.N.C. comrade came forward and accused Zuma of raping her in the guest room of his home. She was 31 and an H.I.V.-positive AIDS activist; he was 63. Never one to shy away from boasting about his libido, Zuma maintained that the sex was consensual and that the woman had worn a colorful traditional wrap—an obvious invitation to sex. “You cannot just leave a woman if she is already at that state,” he testified. He also insisted that he had showered after he had sex with her, to mitigate the chance of contracting AIDS—a comment that made him an international laughingstock. But Zuma survived by painting himself as the victim of a political conspiracy. His supporters swarmed the courthouse with signs proclaiming, BURN THE BITCH and 100% ZULU BOY, and in 2006 the judge acquitted him on all charges. That following year, tapping into an early surge of the populist forces that would soon consume the world, Zuma trounced the neoliberal Mbeki to become head of the A.N.C. In 2009, with the corruption charges against him thrown out on a technicality, Zuma was elected president of South Africa.

The Guptas, who were canny investors, had begun playing the long game from the moment they met Zuma. They put his son Duduzane on their payroll in 2003, and continued to promote him even after Zuma’s fall. The youngest Gupta brother, Rajesh—nicknamed Tony—was especially close to Duduzane, who was “in and out of their house like a fourth Gupta,” according to Pahad, their A.N.C. ally. Duduzane was eventually made a director of several Gupta-linked companies. The brothers helped set him up in a $1.3 million apartment in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper, and paid for his five-star vacations. (Duduzane, who declined to comment for this story, has denied owning property in Dubai.) In 2014, when Duduzane crashed his Porsche into a minibus, killing two passengers, the first person he called was Rajesh.

The Guptas insisted that Duduzane was employed on his own merits. “This young boy since beginning with us and he work even 16 to 18 hours daily,” Ajay told a reporter in his characteristically broken English. “He go himself to the all mines, all places. He don’t sit in an air-conditioned room and just count the money or do this. He earn, very hard-earned money, he do that.” But Duduzane also enabled the Guptas to present their companies as black-owned businesses—a display essential for winning government contracts in post-apartheid South Africa. And it endeared the Guptas to Zuma, who was in and out of their house during his embattled years, performing pujas, or prayers, with their mother, who directed her sons’ domestic lives after the death of their father, in 1994.