Mbeki Set for Likely Defeat at Anc Conference

President Thabo Mbeki is facing humiliating defeat in his attempt to remain leader of the ruling African National Congress by the man he sacked as South Africa's deputy president, Jacob Zuma, ahead of the party's conference which opens on Sunday.

In the most significant political upheaval since the ANC won power with the collapse of apartheid in 1994, Zuma has put together a seemingly unassailable coalition from the party's left wing and other factions that want get rid of Mbeki.

The often bitter and sometimes dirty leadership race has divided the party and the country.

Mbeki had fought hard to retain control of the ANC even after he is constitutionally obliged to step down as South Africa's president in 2009.

But support for him has collapsed in recent weeks as his authoritarian style, market oriented economic policies and controversial positions on Aids and Zimbabwe took their toll.

However, Zuma, 60, cannot count on becoming the country's next president even though normally the ANC leader would be a near certainty to be the party's candidate and thus win the general election.

Prosecutors are deciding whether to charge Zuma with corruption over a £4bn weapons deal, which would most likely derail his presidential bid.

His financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, is serving a 15-year jail sentence for facilitating bribes to Zuma from an arms company. Mbeki sacked Zuma as deputy president when they came to light.

Some of Zuma's critics have accused him of seeking the presidency in order to forestall a prosecution. That accusation has been given added weight by talk within the Zuma campaign of trying to push Mbeki from office and engineer an early general election.

Such a move would take a vote in parliament, and it is not clear if Zuma could muster a majority of ANC MPs. If not, power would be divided between Mbeki as president and Zuma as ANC leader for the next 18 months, extending the struggle that has split the party like at no other time since 1994. The contest has grown increasingly bitter and controversial with both camps accusing the other of buying votes with job offers and cash. Mbeki has attacked Zuma as unfit for office because of the corruption allegations and his trial last year for rape. Zuma was acquitted but drew widespread criticism when he admitted to unprotected sex with a young family friend who he knew was HIV positive.

Zuma said he took a shower instead of using a condom, prompting outrage among Aids campaigners given that he was, at the time, head of the country's National Aids Council.

Last week, Mbeki said he approved of a statement by the former archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, who said that the ANC "must not elect someone who the country will be ashamed of".

Zuma responded by attacking Mbeki for centralizing power and exercising undue influence over the judiciary and parliament, also criticizing the vast gap that continues to exist in South Africa between those who live in "grinding poverty" and the "rolling opulence" of the rich.

He also took a dig at Mbeki's policy of "quiet diplomacy" in Zimbabwe. "When history eventually deals with the dictators, those who stood by and watched the deterioration of nations should bear the consequences," Zuma said in a speech this week.

Mbeki told the Mail and Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg that he has never known such acrimony within the ANC, and rejected charges that people within the party are afraid of him.

"Do I look as if I've got horns? It's said that I block and inhibit open discussion - that's puzzling to me, it's completely untrue," he said.

Zuma has received about 60% of the nominations from the ANC's branches, which will decide the race. He has also won the backing of the unions, the party's women's and youth leagues, and of Tokyo Sex wale, a billionaire businessman who pulled out of the race and brought his supporters to Zuma's camp.

Zuma, a populist who has at times declared himself a socialist, has been working hard to shore up the confidence of businessmen at home and abroad who fear that his populist rhetoric and backing from the unions and Communist party will lead to a shift away from Mbeki's market-based economic policies.