South Africa

Among the issues facing African National Congress President Jacob Zuma over the coming holiday season will be the High Court’s decision on whether he should be prosecuted for...

As the Congress of the People prepares to launch its party on 16 December in Bloemfontein, the governing African National Congress is challenging it legally and physically. The...

At the African National Congress's National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in mid-November, the incoming Chief Executive of ABSA Bank, Maria Ramos, turned up with the group's Chairwoman Gill...

In October 2008, at a fundraiser for Jacob Zuma, several Black Economic Empowerment oligarchs once closely allied to former President Thabo Mbeki turned up.

Black Economic Empowerment was intended to place Africans alongside whites at the head of South African business. Most big white-controlled companies went along with BEE, facing two realities....

Mid-October was not a good time to visit Washington. As banks collapsed and great industrial firms were threatened with closure, Jacob Zuma, the African National Congress President and...

The Congress of South African Trade Unions and South African Communist Party are enraged by African National Congress President Jacob Zuma's statements on economic policy continuity. One Cosatu...

On 13 October, its National WorkingCommittee, dominated by supporters of party President Jacob Zuma, suspended former party Chairman, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, who announced five days earlier that...

The Western Cape and Eastern Cape branches are still reeling from the pro-Zuma leadership’s sacking this year of their pro-Mbeki Premiers, Ebrahim Rasool and Nosimo Balindlela. On 10...

Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota, born in 1948 in Kroonstad, Free State, is from the same political generation as Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale, Mathews Phosa and Kgalema Motlanthe. They all...

The soft-spoken Kgalema Motlanthe, elevated from the Deputy Presidency of the African National Congress to the Presidency of South Africa, faces a tough job. Amid bitterness, Thabo Mbeki...

In 1997, the quiet, unassuming but cerebral Kgalema Motlanthe was nominated by the left wing of the African National Congress tripartite alliance as ANC General Secretary, as a...

Baleka Mbete, Chairwoman of the African National Congress, says: ‘anybody who is thinking of going off and forming another party is wasting their energy’. Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s...

As President Thabo Mbeki claims a rare success in promoting cooperation between the rivals in neighbouring Zimbabwe, the Jacob Zuma-dominated ANC leadership is deciding whether to impeach him,...

Acting Judge Chris Nicholson’s bitterest swipe was his comparison of President Thabo Mbeki’s campaign to sideline rival Jacob Zuma to that of apartheid governments using legislation and state...

Jacob Zuma, having won the election for the presidency of the ruling African National Congress, wants to win next year's election for the presidency of South Africa. He...

Chief Justice Pius Langa: The head of the Constitutional Court and of the Judicial Commission from rural Limpopo Province worked as a labourer in a shirt factory and...

KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala studied at the Universities of Fort Hare and Natal. He lost many pro-African National Congress President Jacob Zuma friends by choosing retired Judge...

Supporters of Jacob Zuma, the President of the African National Congress, made their boldest effort yet to take over the government when they brought Kgalema Motlanthe into the...

The battle for control of the African National Congress divides African intellectuals inside and outside the ANC, with Jacob Zuma supporters, Thabo Mbeki supporters and third-man advocates sparring...

Bitterness has festered within the governing African National Congress since Jacob Zuma took over as party President from national President Thabo Mbeki. The stabbing of Mcebisi Skwatsha, a...

Bulelani Ngcuka, South Africa’s former National Public Prosecutor and boss of the Scorpions anti-corruption investigators, is the man most hated by African National Congress President Jacob Zuma and...

Violent rampages in townships and informal settlements have changed South Africa and the way the world sees it. Mobs have forced tens of thousands of migrants from other...

South African officials visiting Russia on 22-23 May were in damage-control mode. In March, Eskom let it be known that the Russian nuclear reactor builder Atomstroyexport (ASE), would...

With one bound Jacob Zuma was free. No longer was the new President of the African National Congress a dangerous populist in a threatening alliance with communists and...

The sacked director of South Africa's National Intelligence Agency, Billy Masetlha, is at the centre of fresh claims about the agency's collusion with plotters against Equatorial Guinea's government....

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s 2008 budget was a more powerful statement on Thabo Mbeki’s presidency than the President’s own speech. In his State of the Nation address to...

Trevor Manuel’s budget showed real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 5% in 2007 and forecast growth of 4% in 2008, 4.2% in 2009, and 4.6% in 2010.

The African National Congress’s new leadership, in which the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) have aligned themselves behind Jacob...

African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma’s purge of allies of President Thabo Mbeki is gathering pace, with all the ANC’s key policy-making committees under the control of the...

Pomp, ceremony, fashion parades and backslapping are the usual accompaniments to the state-of-the-nation address with which President Thabo Mbeki opens a session of South Africa's parliament. This time,...

The electricity shortage is the immediate issue that makes South Africans question their government's competence. The energy utility Eskom says that underinvestment has left it with inadequate generating...

The governing African National Congress is preparing for all-out war between President Thabo Mbeki – and his allies in government ­ and Jacob Zuma, the ANC's newly elected...

The African National Congress conference in December elected six pro-Jacob Zuma activists into the top leadership positions and gave them control of the National Executive Committee. The Congress...

Two politicians – South Africa’s highly effective Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and France’s forthright Cooperation Minister Jean-Marie Bockel – are adding to the pressure on international institutions to...

South African companies are pushing into India’s markets. So far, the traffic has been one-way with Indian manufacturing companies such as Tata, Mahindra and Mahindra, and pharmaceuticals...

South Africa's mobile telephone giant MTN risks losing its second Indian suitor as a schism in India's richest family could prevent the deal's signing. A merger between the US$38 bn....

The courtship by Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel of Cyril Ramaphosa's MTN hit the rocks in May. Enter the next ardent suitor: Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications. A marriage between Reliance, India's second...

Indian diamond traders are being forced to import rough diamonds directly from overseas suppliers after South Africa-based De Beers, the world’s largest supplier, recently slashed the number of...

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi visited South Africa on 7 January 2008 to deepen a relationship which has been elevated to a ‘strategic dialogue’. The visit was to...