JACOB Zuma, a controversial populist and polygamist with threats of prosecution for fraud and corruption hanging over his head, was last night elected leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress.
His remarkable victory over the humiliated state president, Thabo Mbeki, paves the way for him to become the country's third post-apartheid head of state at the next general election in early 2009.
But the intervening 15 months are certain to be t
he most tumultuous and precarious in South Africa since Nelson Mandela was sworn in on 10 May 1994.
Mr Zuma won with 2,329 of the votes at the ANC's five-yearly electoral convention to the incumbent Mr Mbeki's 1505. The winner's supporters immediately broke into chants of "Zuma, Zuma, Zuma."
His victory means there are now two competing centres of supremacy in the country, with Mr Mbeki serving out the rest of his term as a lame duck head of state while 65-year-old Mr Zuma controls the ruling party. It is unclear how the two can be reconciled since the mutual hatred is deep. Mr Mbeki is broadly committed to a free market economy while Mr Zuma has relied opportunistically on the support of the communist and trade union wings of the broad ANC alliance to secure his rise to power.
The differences are so stark and toxic that some commentators believe it is entirely possible that the 105-year-old movement will split between factions in the next few months.
A decision must be made within the first two months of 2008 on whether to press charges of racketeering, tax evasion, fraud and corruption against Mr Zuma.
That prospect is the spectre at the Zuma triumphal feast. One way or another, the decision by the National Prosecuting Authority will create prolonged instability. The NPA, known as the Scorpions and based on the US FBI, recently won a series of Supreme Court judgments saying documents seized in raids on premises including Mr Zuma's home could be used as evidence.
The NPA boss, Mokotedi Mpshe, now finds himself between a rock and a hard place. If he begins a prosecution there will be massive resentment and unpredictable reactions from the mass of poor, unemployed and marginalised South Africans who support him because they had grown disillusioned with the aloof, arrogant and autocratic Mr Mbeki, who proved incapable of empathising with ordinary citizens.
If Mr Mpshe's nerve fails and he grants the new ANC leader immunity from prosecution, he will undermine the independence of the legal system enshrined in South Africa's liberal post-apartheid constitution and South Africa will have to live with a president sullied by unresolved allegations of corrupt practices. The danger is that South Africa, long acclaimed as the continent's beacon of hope, will become just another banana republic in which corruption is entrenched. Any hint of interference by Mr Zuma with the due process of the law would make his government a pariah.
Mr Zuma has tried to reassure the world that there would be no sweeping economic policy changes under his leadership.
But the rand has already suffered a mini-collapse, seen as a warning by the international financial community, and South Africans will be looking nervously at what happens to the currency today now that Mr Zuma heads the ruling party.
A collapsing rand would, in the short term, favour tourists who would be able to snap up bargains at South Africa's spectacular game reserves and coastal and golf resorts.
But speculation is bound also to increase about the viability of football's 2010 World Cup, which is scheduled to take place in South Africa. Already, stadia are behind schedule and a period of political turmoil may persuade FIFA, the world football authority, to unwrap its emergency plan to stage the tournament elsewhere, possibly either Germany or Australia.
Mr Mbeki and Mr Zuma's names were the only two put forward in the bruising contest for the top post. There had been widespread speculation that Cyril Ramaphosa, the man Nelson Mandela wanted to succeed him as head of state, would be proposed as a popular compromise between two flawed candidates. But Mr Ramaphosa, who has kept his head down to the disappointment of many, continued to keep it low.
