JOHANNESBURG (AFP) -- South Africa's former deputy president Jacob Zuma won the backing of a majority in a poll Tuesday as the best choice to lead the country after emerging unscathed from rape and graft charges.

Fifty-seven percent of the 8,137 people who responded to the poll conducted by the Sowetan, a black daily which claims a readership of 1.6 million, said they wanted Zuma to succeed President Thabo Mbeki who steps down in 2009.

Forty-three percent said Zuma, who was sacked by Mbeki in June last year after his financial adviser Schabir Shaik was sentenced to 15 years in jail for corruption, should not steer Africa's largest economy.

It was the first poll to be conducted after Zuma was cleared of raping a young HIV-positive woman and his reprieve in a corruption scandal following a judge's decision to throw out the case.