South Africa ruling party to hold leadership vote

By Paul Simao

POLOKWANE, South Africa (Reuters) - The African National Congress opens a leadership conference on Sunday which could determine who becomes South Africa's next president.

More than 4,000 ANC delegates gather at the five-day conference to elect a leader who could succeed South African President Thabo Mbeki when he leaves office in 2009.

The ANC typically wins two-thirds of the vote in national elections, giving it a stranglehold on the choice of president in Africa's largest economy.

The leadership race has produced some of the worst divisions in the ANC since the end of apartheid in 1994, pitting Mbeki against his left-wing rival, ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

Zuma, a populist who was fired by Mbeki after being linked to a corruption scandal, is going into the leadership vote with significant momentum, having nearly doubled Mbeki in party branch nominations in the lead-up to the congress.

The 65-year-old Zuma also has been endorsed by the ANC's women's and youth leagues as well as by the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is in a formal governing alliance with the ANC.

Key members of the South African Communist Party, also in the governing coalition, have thrown their support behind Zuma out of a belief that he will reverse Mbeki's centrist policies and tilt the country to the left.

Mbeki, who took over the party from Nelson Mandela in 1997 and then the country two years later, is running for a third term as ANC leader, a position that would give him a big say over who becomes the ANC presidential candidate in 2009.