Word: mbeki
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...preliminary round of nominations from A.N.C. branch parties gave Zuma, the party's deputy president, a crushing lead over the incumbent, Thabo Mbeki, who is currently President of both the party and the country. An Ipsos Markinor Socio-Political Trends survey of 3,500 people taken in November and released on Saturday also showed 41% of South Africans think Zuma should succeed Mbeki as leader of their nation in 2009, when the constitution requires him to step down...
...Since the A.N.C. dominates the political scene in South Africa, Zuma can expect to become his nation's president if he wins the party post this year. If he manages to hold onto his position at the top of the pary, Mbeki would have a chance to install a hand-picked successor...
...last few months have seen an increasingly rancorous split in the A.N.C., between supporters of Zuma and those loyal to Mbeki. The President sacked Zuma as his deputy in office in 2005 when Zuma's advisor was convicted of corruption...
...Though Mbeki presides over an economy growing at around 5% a year, the benefits of that new prosperity have not trickled down to the townships. Unemployment nationwide is 26%, and a November study by South Africa's Institute for Race Relations found the numbers of people living on less than $1 a day rose from 1.89 million in 1996 to 4.2 million in 2005. While Mbeki's support comes from the country's business community, Zuma, who never went to school, is a populist with a natural appeal to poor South Africans...
...letter, Mbeki describes his admiration for the central character in his favorite Shakespeare play, Coriolanus, who set out, as he wrote, with "truthfulness, courage, self-sacrifice, absence of self-seeking, brotherliness, heroism, optimism." Mbeki aspired to the same qualities, to be a "person who does good, and does it honestly," he tells Gevisser. But Coriolanus is a tragedy. The hero becomes a vainglorious despot. Mbeki is no Coriolanus, but as his paranoia and isolation reached new heights last year, Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, warned the country may be "drifting toward dictatorship...