By Thebe Mabanga
The ANC will be watched closely to test claims that, whoever wins leadership in Polokwane next week, there will be no purge of the loser’s supporters.
Party caucus chair Vytjie Mentor says predictions of a fallout after the conference are wishful thinking.
That view may be wishful thinking. The main point of [...]

By Carol Paton
Thabo Mbeki has always had a thing about history: he wants to make it.
Next week he might. If things go his way at the ANC conference, he will be party president of the ANC when it celebrates its centenary. It is more likely, though, that he will be the first sitting president of [...]

By Amarnath Singh
For politicos, certainly, the place to be this week has to be the Limpopo capital, Polokwane - more specifically the ANC’s national congress being held at the University of Limpopo (UL) from December 15 to 20. This is where delegates will choose either Thabo Mbeki or his rival, Jacob Zuma, as party president [...]

By Carol Paton
16 December is the starting date of the ANC’s national conference.4 075 is the number of delegates who will vote at the conference.
6 000 is the number of people who will attend.
R25m is what it will cost.
906 is the number of votes of the Eastern Cape, the biggest bloc.
0 is the number of [...]

By CUNNINGHAM NGCUKANA
The FM’s cover story on Jacob Zuma (November 30) was nothing but a scare story. It calls into question the magazine’s objectivity over the ANC succession issue and is an insult to the majority of the ANC branches that nominated Zuma.
When a leader says he will implement ANC policies if he becomes [...]

By Rob Rose and Carol Paton
ANC candidate’s financial backers are determined to stay under cover
Does Jacob Zuma have his own banknote printing press? That seems to be the only way the would-be ANC and SA president can be paying for his international jaunts. For despite a series of high-cost trips, no-one admits funding the cash-strapped [...]

Mankweng village, across the road from the University of Limpopo

By Carol Paton
Will Jacob Zuma and his allies have a winner-takes-all approach to the election of the all-powerful ANC national executive committee at this month’s national conference?
If so, some of the most respected figures in the ANC could be in danger of being excluded. These include ANC strategist and head of policy in the presidency [...]

The one good thing to emerge from the run-up to the ANC’s watershed elective conference, now just over two weeks away, is that people want change.
After two terms of President Thabo Mbeki - three if you count his role as de facto prime minister under Nelson Mandela - there is an understandable hunger for [...]

By BARNEY MTHOMBOTHI
Of all the mistakes, missteps and even misfortunes of this government, nothing comes close - in proportion or lunacy - to the insanity that is the arms deal, which has poisoned the political atmosphere and tainted everything it touched.
As Thabo Mbeki’s term draws to a close, the chattering classes become ever more [...]