Word: ance
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...January, South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, held a rally in East London on the country's southern coast to launch its campaign for re-election. Inside the city's stadium, in a pen between the stage and a sea of supporters in the ANC colors of yellow, black and green, stood the party's VIPs. Many of the men wore Gucci and the women Prada, but mixed in with them were 60 or so people, of both sexes, in combat fatigues whose camo caps identified them as veterans of Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation...
...ANC is expected to win a fourth consecutive term in South Africa's parliamentary and presidential elections on April 22. But for the first time since it came to power with the end of apartheid in 1994, that result is not guaranteed, and by any measure - popularity, membership, moral authority - the party is in decline. Its leaders are embroiled in a series of scandals involving both corruption and ineptitude. As a government, it has failed to stem raging violent crime and the world's largest HIV/AIDS epidemic. It has presided over an economic boom that has made millionaires...
...party split in November when a group of disaffected members formed a breakaway group, the Congress of the People (COPE), and old friends are turning on it. Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu refuses to vote for the ANC, saying it has betrayed Nelson Mandela's legacy. Helen Suzman, a prominent white antiapartheid campaigner, called its performance an "enormous disappointment" a few months before her death on New Year...
...many, the ANC's new leader, Jacob Zuma, embodies the party's decay. He won the leadership in late 2007 after a vicious fight with predecessor Thabo Mbeki that split the party - and led to COPE's formation. In 2005 his business adviser, Shabir Shaik, was sentenced to 15 years for soliciting bribes for him, and for years Zuma has faced a related prosecution for corruption, racketeering, fraud, money-laundering and tax evasion. Last month, Shaik secured an early release because of hypertension. On April 6, after three years of trying to bring Zuma to court, the National Prosecuting Authority...
...questions over Zuma's commitment to racial reconciliation - famously, in a country still wracked by racial violence, he chose the Zulu war anthem, "Bring Me My Machine Gun" as a theme song - and about his competence and judgment. He refuses to answer questions on policy, deferring instead to the ANC's executive committee. His coyness may be wise: those opinions he has aired have been startling. On trial for rape in 2006, a charge of which he was acquitted, he revealed he thought a shower could prevent HIV infection. Among his supporters, all that only adds to his appeal: Zuma...