What December Will Tell

Former African Union Commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has a critical year ahead as the ANC prepares to elect a new candidate to lead what promises to be a stormy election. Will the scales tip in her favor?

- Vuyo Mvoko

On Friday January 27, her 68th birthday, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma ended her four-and-a-half year tenure as the first woman chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission. She didn’t seek a second term, many assume, so she could devote energy to her bid to become South Africa’s first woman state president.

With incumbent President Jacob Zuma, her ex-husband, serving his final term, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) must elect a new candidate to lead it into the teeth of what is likely to be a stormy election in 2019. That person will be named at the party’s 54th national elective conference in December.

Dlamini-Zuma’s campaign got a shot in the arm a day before the party’s 105th birthday, on January 7, when she was the first candidate to be endorsed by a party structure.

“Her capacity, experience and credentials are second to none,” says the African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL) executive. This was bold talk, in a party that doesn’t like to talk about succession (at least until the leadership says it’s ok).

That Dlamini-Zuma’s backers endorsed her with alacrity is telling. With ANC women, youth and veterans’ leagues renowned for punting candidates they know will find favor with the prevailing faction, it can be assumed that the former AU Commission chair has the tacit support of both President Zuma and the powerful so-called ‘Premier League’, a coterie of ANC provincial chairpersons who are also Premiers of the three provinces of the Free State, North West and Mpumalanga.