The newly-inaugurated president's rural home will be added to a tourism route that traces the role of icons like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi in the fight against white minority rule in KwaZulu-Natal province.

"We will takes tourists to Nkandla where he was born, he grew up and studied. We will also see his house. There won't be any problem. It is a very rural area, people are very friendly," Bunny Bhoola, director of African Link.

"Now Jacob Zuma is president. He is a part of our political history. He is delivering into another level of freedom," Bhoola told AFP at a tourism conference on Monday.

Bhoola was confident that Zuma, a former herdboy and political prisoner who took office on Saturday after fighting off a lengthy graft investigation and a rape acquittal, will attract 2010 fans.

"People overseas who come for football will be interested because he is a controversial person. He is not accepting what life has thrown at him. He struggled all his life. He is very much in touch with grassroots people. That is why they are so interested in him."

The KwaZulu-Natal Freedom Route was launched last September. It includes the township settlement founded by Gandhi near Durban and the site where South Africa's first democratic president Mandela was arrested by apartheid police.

"I put him (Zuma) in the same package but in a different category. He needs to look at Mandela as his mentor. People have a lot of faith in him," said Bhoola.

The FIFA World Cup starts in June 2010.