By Prakash Naidoo 

After a day of rebellious attitude from delegates, which threw the election of a new leader behind schedule, ANC party bosses were confident that the nomination and election process will get underway late tonight.

It brings to a climax almost three years of internecine fighting within the ruling party, as President Thabo Mbeki battles his deputy Jacob Zuma for the leadership of the ANC. So far they are the only two people whose names have been put forward by the provinces and both camps have their own vastly different lists of preferred candidates for the leadership and executive positions.

After a day of high drama yesterday, speculation was rife this morning that the five-day conference might be extended to the weekend to accommodate demands from Zuma supporters that the votes be counted manually. But ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama insisted that there would be no “over-run” of the conference and said the party’s steering committee was working hard to “pull things together”. Ngonyama, who together with transport minister Jeff Radebe addressed journalists a few hours ago, said the costs of extending the conference, even if for one day, would be extensive. Radebe acknowledged that the steering committee was concerned about having lost so much time on the first day and was still hoping to reach a compromise with the Zuma camp on the  counting process.

Ngonyama said some delegates have a “fixation” about the positions and are determined to secure “a particular result. They want to be satisfied and they want no doubts”.

But before the nomination process can get underway, two crucial proposals for constitutional amendments will be debated. The first will deal with the issue of gender parity and the other, whether the NEC should be expanded from 60 to 80 members.

If either one or both are adopted, it means the workload of the ANC’s electoral commission will immediately increase and become more complicated. And if the conference is to end on schedule at lunch time on Thursday, then there is every indication that delegates will be meeting long into the night over the next three days.