Embattled Zuma to see leadership challenge

South African President Jacob Zuma will face a leadership challenge from his deputy when the ruling ANC gathers for a party conference on Sunday, with the winner inheriting a century-old movement mired in a deep crisis.

Roughly 4,500 delegates will gather in Bloemfontein to decide whether Zuma, or Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, will lead the African National Congress and the country through to 2019.

Preliminary voting has put Zuma well ahead of his rival in the leadership stakes, and he remains the odds-on favourite to remain in power after the 2014 elections.

But with the party in the kind of crisis seldom seen since it was banned by the apartheid government in 1960, Zuma could be in for a rocky ride.

After ousting president Thabo Mbeki in an act of political regicide at the last ANC elective conference five years ago, Zuma now faces a similar fate.

The conference will cap an horrendous year for the storied revolutionary movement.

Despite the cadres’ best efforts, 12 months of celebrations to mark the party’s 100th year have been drowned out by allegations of corruption, flashes of authoritarianism and economic mismanagement which critics say borders on gross negligence.

The August day which saw 34 striking miners killed by police on a dusty patch of Highveld may be the nadir, but thanks to Zuma’s reluctance to get involved it may yet prove to be the end of South Africa’s 18-year post-apartheid honeymoon with ANC.

“President Zuma has been a very indecisive president,” said Adriaan Basson, author of “Zuma Exposed”.

“Further to that, he has benefitted, his children and a lot of people around him, to a large extent in terms of business interests and positions.”

The party of government and the party of anti-apartheid heroes Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo has seldom been weaker or seemed so out of touch with the lives of ordinary South Africans.

According to a recent Ipsos poll more than half of the ANC’s own supporters believe the future of the party is uncertain because of leadership issues.

During recent by-elections voters gave an indication of their view. The ANC suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Inkatha Freedom Party in Zuma’s home municipality.

The ward is home to Zuma’s homestead of Nkandla, which controversially received a $28 million upgrade using taxpayers cash, in a country were millions live in make-shift shacks.

— ‘Zuma, a masterful strategist’ —

Looking ahead to 2014 the party faces a serious threat of losing control of Gauteng — South Africa’s economic heart, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria — to the opposition Democratic Alliance, which already controls the Western Cape, including Cape Town.

It is not a coincidence that Gauteng members are among those shouting loudest for a leadership change.

Yet most analysts expect Zuma to survive. “President Zuma is a masterful strategist,” said Basson.

“He’s been able to survive a rape trial as well as a corruption trial where there were very serious charges levelled against him. He came out of these trials and presented himself as a victim.”

Whoever wins the leadership battle faces a struggle to revive the party and silence critics.

Ahead of the Bloemfontein meeting the ANC has been harshly criticised by the clergy and the business community.

On Tuesday leading clerics issued a joint letter warning the country was in crisis because leadership had lost its way.

“The dream of a just, non-racial and prospering democracy is temporarily in eclipse,” said the church leaders, including the head of the South African Council of Churches, Bishop Jo Seoka.

“We are alarmed at the growing tendency toward putting the interests of the party above the interests of the nation.”

Away from the leadership challenge, investors will be looking to see what policy developments come from the conference.

With growth at a three-year low, unemployment hovering around 25 percent and the education system ranking among the worst in the world, the outcome could determine whether credit ratings agencies give South Africa another downgrade.

“There are a number of these critical business issues which are still up in the air and while they are not resolved, business and investors do not react well,” Nicky Newton-King, chair of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange told AFP recently.

Policy makers need “to be clear about policy direction on critical business issues,” she said.

Issues like the “strategic nationalisation” of the mining sector, the increase of mining taxes and minimum wages will be up for discussion.