South Africa's Mbeki to exit stage with mixed legacy

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - President Thabo Mbeki was seen as a consummate tactician inside the ruling ANC but also someone who brooked no dissent and neglected a glaring AIDS epidemic and widespread poverty and crime.

Mbeki's almost decade-long grip on power, already weakened by his loss of the African National Congress leadership to Jacob Zuma last year, unraveled on Saturday when the party decided to oust him from the presidency.

The South African leader, 66, had been constitutionally barred from running for president again when his term ended in 2009 but had been widely expected to survive as a lame duck president in his remaining months in office.

First elected in 1999 to succeed Nelson Mandela as South Africa's second black president, Mbeki has presided over a boom in Africa's largest economy. But the legacy has been tarnished by continuing high rates of poverty and a massive AIDS epidemic.

A long-time member of the ANC and son of a senior party leader, Mbeki joined the ANC Youth League at 14 and became active in student politics. He also flirted with communism.

"I was born into the struggle," he says.

Mbeki left apartheid South Africa in the 1960s to pursue a masters degree in economics in England and followed up with military training in the Soviet Union, which backed the ANC's anti-apartheid struggle.

He was a spokesman for the ANC's armed campaign against white minority rule and spent years lobbying against apartheid across the world. His ties to the diplomatic world would prove invaluable later when he assumed the presidency.

ZIMBABWE DEAL

Mbeki is more comfortable in small groups than in front of crowds. He was also hobbled by an impression that he was blind to the problems of common people.

Investors praised him for putting in place pro-business policies, while trade unions and others on the left condemned him for failing to deliver on the ANC's grand promises of providing housing and basic services to the poor.

They also accused him of undermining South Africa's democratic credentials by using state institutions to attack opponents, including Zuma.

Mbeki fired Zuma as deputy president after he became embroiled in a corruption scandal in 2005.

The charges against Zuma were thrown out earlier this month, prompting his supporters to again say that Mbeki and his aides had used the case to try to derail Zuma's hopes of becoming the country's next president. Mbeki denied the charges.

The infighting didn't deter Mbeki from an active role on the world stage, where he argued on behalf of the developing nations, fashioning close relationships with the leaders of India, Brazil and others wanting to reform world institutions.

He scored successes on the foreign policy front, mediating an end to several conflicts in Africa and helping to bring Zimbabwe's government and opposition into a power-sharing deal that could end that country's political and economic crisis.