Zuma, who was forced to quit as president in 2018, has fallen out with the governing African National Congress (ANC) and has been campaigning for a new party called uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) named after the ANC's formed armed wing.
The country has yet to produce a female president—something the upcoming general elections are unlikely to change.
This is Uhuru Kenyatta's second such appointment in a year, the first one being in Nigeria.
The victims were among the tens of thousands of people who crowded into a football stadium in Durban on Saturday for the launch of the African National Congress's election manifesto.