Thabo Mbeki's face has been almost omnipresent in South Africa in recent weeks, smiling at motorists and pedestrians from election posters in every city and town, talking almost daily to television viewers in their homes and speaking with conviction as frequently to radio listeners.
Yet the African National Congress president who will formally take over as president of South Africa's fledgling democracy from Nelson Mandela on June 14th remains an enigma to many, perhaps even the majority, of his countrymen.
Even when the pipe-smoking Mr Mbeki, aged 56, is in his most engaging mode - and he can be extremely charming - he retains an air of detachment, perhaps even aloofness. He simply does not exude the same warmth as President Mandela.
An ardent chess player - he is said to play against himself on a computer - Mr Mbeki is certainly a thoughtful man. His political foes see him as a calculating person, one who is thinking through his next move on the political chess board even as he jokes with his interlocutors.
His rating by voters on a scale of 0 to 10 has risen a full percentage point over the last year, rising from 5.9 a year ago to 6, largely as a result of the ANC's vigorous and well-funded election campaign which promoted him as President Mandela's successor.
The small but financially powerful white and Indian communities remain wary of him. Whites give him a 3.9 rating. Indians accord him only a fraction more, 4.1. Both ratings are on the negative side of the divide. They indicate that he has not won them over. It is as if they are on the alert for the next move from the political strategist.
Born into a politically prominent family in Idutywa in Transkei - his father, Govan, was a high-ranking member of the ANC and Communist Party ally - Mr Mbeki is a forthright champion of affirmative action. But in seeking to address the historical injustices of the past, he gives priority to the claims of indigenous blacks over their compatriots of mixed racial descent ("the coloureds") or those of Indian descent.
Mr Mbeki, who campaigned for the ANC's cause as a student before going into exile in 1962 on the orders of the organisation, frequently uses the term "African" in an exclusive sense, meaning indigenous blacks. While there are exceptions - his "I am an African" speech to parliament in 1996 is one - his tendency to define "African" narrowly typecasts him as an African nationalist or Africanist.
A major theme of his during the five years he served as deputy president under Mr Mandela has been the need for an African renaissance. He believes passionately that it is needed to bolster pride in the continent's people and to shake off the image of Africa as a continent associated with coups d'etat, dictators, famine and begging bowls.
But while Mr Mbeki may indulge in rhetorical endorsement of the ideal of an African renaissance, his feet are never far from the ground and political computations are seldom not grinding in his brain. Linked to his astuteness is political toughness.
One sign of that is the fate of men who opposed him or who stood in the way of his ascent to the apex of the ANC.
Cyril Ramaphosa, former ANC secretary-general who was once seen as a possible successor to Nelson Mandela, has left the political arena to become a business mogul. So has Tokyo Sexwale, the former premier of Gauteng province, who made the mistake of declaring that he might challenge Mr Mbeki's status as the designated successor to Mr Mandela. Several other leaders whose loyalty he could not rely on were also removed from influential positions.
In their biography of Mr Mbeki, the South African journalists Adrian Hadland and Jovial Rantao quote an unnamed former cabinet minister as saying: "Thabo is paranoid about opposition, particularly internal opposition."
Mr Mbeki's dislike of criticism is starkly manifest in his sharp reaction to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for daring to conclude that the ANC committed gross human rights violations during its armed struggle against white rule.
His initial resistance - in the form of an ANC statement and an unsuccessful bid to obtain a court order against publication of the TRC report - has since had a sequel: a verbal assault on the TRC in a parliamentary debate accusing it of criminalising the ANC's liberation struggle.
The ANC's angry response to the TRC report drew sharp reactions from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Human Rights Watch, which resonate with concerns about Mr Mbeki's intolerance of opposition. Archbishop Tutu's words are still quoted by the ANC's political foes; the prelate spoke of the danger of yesterday's oppressed become today's oppressors.
He has certainly signalled that he plans to keep a far tighter hold on developments in the ANC. Since he became ANC president in December 1997 provincial premiers in ANC-controlled provinces are appointed by him, not elected by the ANC's provincial conference.
Mr Mbeki has introduced democratic centralism - a decidedly authoritarian system - into the ANC's internal structures. There is irony in that. The concept, of course, is one favoured by communist theoreticians. Mr Mbeki, however, has severed his ties with the South African Communist Party.
A veil of secrecy has been drawn over Mr Mbeki's sojourn with the SA Communist Party. Official biographies, including the one available on the ANC website, say nothing about it.
A cynical explanation may be that Mr Mbeki judged it expedient to join the party when it seemed to be the route to the top but left when it became apparent that communism was a spent force after its collapse in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
More charitably, however, perhaps as a good chess player he was a move ahead of events.