It may be my ignorance, but Zuma seems a very African African. Perhaps we shouldn't impose our cultural prejudices as to leadership etc on someone else's culture.
Is he a step forward or a step backwards?
Not at all, he is very much an 'African's African' and it's a major factor behind his popularity and [from a western perspective] unlikely political survival. It's hard to imagine a 'western' politican surviving with such a 'past', nevermind making head of Government, but Africans respect strong leadership above all - the quality and direction of that leadership being too often a secondary consideration - the consequences of which are abundant.
Of course there are a raft of reasons behind the train wreck that post colonial Africa became, not least being meddling by former colonial powers and the cold war geopolitical chess game of the 70s and 80s. The west must shoulder a significant proportion of the blame for the state of Africa today - but by no means all of it. Today other interests continue to undermine the continent, plenty from within, but some from without.
Back to Zuma, it's not [IMO] so much a case of imposing a cultural predjudice as an inevitable comparison. Honesty, integrity and accountability
tend to be more highly valued in 'western' politicians [although their repeated failure to meet such expectations begs the question why] - that's not to say such traits are
not valued by Africans, and expectations are certainly changing in that respect.
Africa still has tribal issues that survive embedded within their political machines - a source of friction the west has [by and large] not really had, or has since eradicated. Again, the effects of tribal affiliation on many, if not most African regimes are self evident.
As for Zuma being a step forward or backward - I'd say he's both.
Let me also add that the above is rather a broad brush - especially the use of 'Africans' - in the same way some use 'Europeans' - it's a wide generalisation and used as such - but I'm in rather a rush and will qualify or illustrate later if necessary.