By Ayo Kehinde
.Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa
By late Sunday, today, the result of the contest for the leadership of South Africa’s African National Congress, ANC, would be out and President Jacob Zuma will be on his way out of the plum job.
Deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa and Zuma’s ex-wife and former cabinet minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, are the major contenders in a race many predict will be tight and could test the loyalty of their supporters for the future survival of the party before the 2019 polls.
Others in the race for the party’s leadership are the ANC’s Treasurer General Zweli Mkhize, Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, minister Jeff Radebe, former province leader Mathews Phosa and the Speaker of South Africa’s lower house Baleka Mbete.
More than 5,000 delegates are taking part in the four-day ANC elective conference at the Expo Centre in Johannesburg in a secret balloting.
President Zuma, 75, who has been in power since 2009 and will vacate office when his Constitutional allowed two terms of five years expires in 2019 is said to be backing his 68 years old former wife. A former foreign and home minister, who has four children for President Zuma before they divorced 20years ago, she is known to criticise the sustained power of white-owned businesses as opposed to that of Ramaphosa, a former leading trade unionist and one pf the country’s new rich blacks since the dawn of democratic rule in 1994.
The party has overwhelmingly won every victory since 1994, when democratic elections where everyone could vote brought the end to white-minority rule. But it polled only 54 per cent in last year’s local elections, its worst result since taking power.
