Mbeki's Deputy in Fraud Scandal

It has been dubbed Hamlet without the prince, a trial where the accused is absent but which could determine if he is to rule South Africa.

The stage is a courtroom in Durban which from tomorrow will decide if there is something rotten about the Deputy President, Jacob Zuma. An adviser to Zuma goes on trial for corruption and fraud and, if he is convicted, the Zulu tipped as South Africa's next leader, will be deemed a crook and expected to fall.

The most important trial since apartheid ended is a test not just for Zuma but the young democracy because it pits rival parts of the state and the ruling African National Congress against each other.

Victory for the 62-year-old deputy will keep him on course to succeed President Thabo Mbeki as the continent's most important man. Defeat will see him shamed and perhaps jailed in a subsequent trial. Commentators say it is a defining moment in South Africa's journey to a system of democratic accountability with clear lines between party, state and personal interests.

'The trial will set the standard for public morality: the way those in the public eye - including those in business and civil society - go about playing their roles,' said Mondli Makhanya, editor of the Johannesburg Sunday Times.

Durban's high court will host just one defendant, Schabir Shaik, who faces two counts of corruption and a third of fraud in relation to arms deals and alleged bribes. The 47-year-old businessman denies the charges.

Zuma has not been charged with anything, but according to a leaked copy of Shaik's 45-page charge sheet the deputy president's name is cited on every second page in relation to 238 payments from Shaik totalling £108,000.

Prosecutors say these were bribes to Zuma in the form of cash, bonds, loan repayments, living allowances, clothing, school and university fees for his children, in return for help obtaining government contracts. Zuma says the payments were loans.

Prosecutors say that documents, computer disks and more than 100 witnesses will show that from 1995 the two men formed a partnership whereby Zuma used his political clout to benefit Shaik's company, Nkobi Holdings.

It is alleged that in 2000 the patron of the ANC's moral regeneration campaign solicited an annual £43,000 bribe from one of Shaik's clients, a French arms company, Thomson-CSF/Thales.

It was one small part of a multi-billion pound arms deal which critics say became a trough for senior ANC officials and their friends. South Africa's equivalent of the FBI, the Scorpions, started investigating Zuma almost three years ago. The probe sparked a political firestorm. Zuma is extremely popular with the trade unions and the party rank-and-file. Affable and shrewd, he is the government troubleshooter when it needs to smooth difficult issues such as HIV/Aids,spending constraints or the flashpoint province of KwaZulu-Natal. But he has opponents within the movement, including, some claim, Mbeki.

Whether too left-wing, too populist, too independent or too Zulu for the Xhosa-heavy elite, it seems clear that senior figures want to block Zuma from the top job.

Allies wonder if dirty tricks are behind the leaking of court documents which have led to a trial by media. When the Scorpions said they had a prima facia case but not enough to prosecute Zuma, his friends accused the chief investigator of being an apartheid-era spy, a claim rejected by a judicial commission.

An ANC member since the age of 16, Zuma was an intelligence operative for the movement's armed wing during apartheid. While dodging police - and probable torture - he formed a bond with Shaik, another freedom fighter, whose job was to smuggle money.

With little formal education, Zuma is not said to be especially numerate and after the ANC took power he allowed Shaik to run his financial affairs. At some point, say prosecutors, that relationship turned corrupt.

Analysts say that South Africa's nation-building faces the same challenge to cut some roots of the struggle before they turn rotten.