After a little googling, I found the solution here http://en.opensuse.org/Using_zen-updater#Why_zen-updater_crashes
Basically, it says that the zenworks database is corrupted and one way to fix it is to:
- kill the zmd and zen-updater processes
- delete the database at /var/lib/zmd/zmd.db
- restart zenworks and zen-updater.