And Mme Sarkozy’s winning ways

Wait till Jacob Zuma hears this. France’s new first lady, Carla Bruni, is into polygamy.

‘Monogamy bores me terribly,” she told the French newspaper, Le Figaro, a few months before meeting and rapidly marrying President Nicolas Sarkozy. ‘I prefer polygamy and polyandry [the female equivalent].”

Bruni — retired supermodel, chart-topping singer of breathy love songs and self-described man tamer — flew into Cape Town on Thursday with her husband of just three weeks.

While Sarkozy and President Thabo Mbeki hunkered down to jaw-breaking bilaterals about load-shedding, African Union security and capacity building in local government, France’s first lady was probably working out what to wear to meet the man she’s really come here to see, if not subdue: Nelson Mandela.

The Sarkozys arrive in Johannesburg on Friday for a private audience with South Africa’s former president. Bruni might have dated some of the world’s most powerful men, but she’s no more immune to the Madiba legend than any other celebrity whose chief joy in life is to meet someone even more famous than themselves.

And, as we know, the old man is no slouch when it comes to paying courtly attention to a pretty woman.

Indeed madame’s beauty and height — she towers over her husband by four old-fashioned inches — coupled with Mandela’s flirty ways and failing eyesight, might lead to the small French president being overlooked entirely.

Rumours that Bruni was taking her guitar to Mandela’s house to sing him a song from her hit album, Quelqu’un m’a dit, could not be confirmed at the time of going to press.

Quelqu’un m’a dit (Someone Told Me), a critically rated collection of Bruni’s charming compositions, sold more than two million copies in France alone on its release in 2002. A video of her singing it in typical sexy-but-cheesy French pop style is now a YouTube staple worth checking out.

Music is a point of common interest that would give JZ an excuse to introduce himself to la belle Bruni. He could send her a demo of him and his merry band singing awuleth’mshini wam, a uniquely South African love song.

But for now poor Jacob will have to get in line behind the man who remains on top of the world’s most-wanted list — at least until after the 2009 elections, when he might be in with a chance to meet the glam madame without having to hang around the back door to Tuynhuys.

Essential guide to Carla Bruni

On the French

Bruni was born in Italy and moved to France with her mega-wealthy industrialist family when she was five. She still considers herself Italian and was quoted saying she finds the French ‘miserable, negative people”. However, on February 2 this year she underwent an ethnic epiphany and married the makwerekwere president of France.

On older men

She likes ’em and counts Mick Jagger and Donald Trump among her past dates, but suffers no illusions. ‘They never get more mature,” she says, ‘they just age.”

On politics

Before the French presidential elections in March 2007, the left-leaning Bruni said she would vote for Ségolène Royal, Sarkozy’s Socialist rival.

On her husband

It’s not easy to ignore French food, even for French love, but when Bruni met Sarkozy at a palace dinner party in October, they both lost their appetites. Before long she was whispering sweet chansons in the president’s ear. As she describes it: ‘Between Nicolas and me it wasn’t fast, it was instantaneous.”

Family values

Bruni has a six-year-old son by French philosopher Raphaël Enthoven. She met Raphaël through his father, Jean-Paul Enthoven, with whom she was having a relationship at the time.

On being first lady

Speaking to L’Express in her first interview since marrying the president, Bruni said: ‘I love adventure and it is a great adventure to accompany a man who governs France.”