Word: africa
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...member of the ruling African National Congress will tell you, officially you don't run for President of South Africa; the party asks you to serve. That's why there's so much attention this week on the ANC's provincial branches, which are set to nominate their choices for party president. The final vote takes place at the party's national party conference in December, and so strong is the ANC's electoral support that whoever wins the leadership of the organization once headed by Nelson Mandela is deemed a shoe-in for South Africa's presidency...
...fact that so many of the vital decisions shaping South Africa's future are made first within the ranks of the ruling party has prompted the country's small opposition parties to accuse the ANC of remaining true to the Stalinist traditions of its days as a guerrilla movement. But if the run-up to December's vote is anything to go by, the process of choosing South Africa's next President is set to one of the loudest and most open elections in African history. The race to succeed President Thabo Mbeki when his second term ends...
...enough, lately it has been Mbeki's turn to feel the heat. Some of it, to be fair, has been his own doing: In August, he caused outrage by sacking the well-respected Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. She had taken steps to restore some credibility to South Africa's HIV/AIDS program, which had suffered under her boss, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, best known for her recommendation of garlic and beetroot as AIDS treatments. And Mbeki himself has expressed skepticism that HIV causes AIDS. But Madlala-Routledge's true crime, say close observers, was lack of loyalty...
...reinstating the corruption charges against Zuma - and his issue, on Sept. 10, of an arrest warrant for Jackie Selebi, the country's top policeman and the current head of Interpol. Selebi, an ANC heavyweight and another key Mbeki ally, has long been under fire for failing to tackle South Africa's raging violent crime. But there was even more heat over his friendship with Glen Agliotti, a man suspected by South African police of being a crime boss, and who was arrested by the Scorpions and charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the 2005 killing of mining...
...allegation that South Africa's state organs are being used as battlegrounds for the ANC's internal feuds seem fair. But they may no longer have grounds to complain that the process in which the ANC will choose the next President of South Africa is less than transparent...