South African president Jacob Zuma apologises over 20th child

He said: “I deeply regret the pain that I have caused to my family, the ANC (African National Congress) and South Africans in general.”

Since becoming president last May, Zuma, 67, has taken a fifth wife, Thobeka Madiba, who will accompany him to Buckingham Palace for his state visit to Britain next month, has fathered an illegitimate child by a mistress and has started work on a £5.4m expansion of his home.

His latest baby, his 20th, was born to Sonono Khoza, 39, the daughter of Irvin Khoza, chairman of the country’s 2010 World Cup organising committee. On the birth certificate of Thandekile, their four-month-old daughter, the parents claim to have contracted a “customary marriage”, although this does not appear to be true.

South Africans regard Zuma’s love life as something of a soap opera. In 2000, Kate Mantsho, one of his wives and the mother of five of his children, committed suicide with an overdose, aged 44, saying he made her life hell.

Another wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 60, who was the mother of four of his children, divorced him in 1998. She now sits in his cabinet as home affairs minister.

In addition to three current wives, he also has as a fiancée a Swazi princess, Sebentile Dlamini, for whom he paid a dowry of 10 cows in 2002. There is now talk of a marriage to Khoza.