'Zuma for president' - supporters

By Nadia Samie
21 Septembder 2006

With about six months to go before the ruling ANC puts forward names as candidates for the party’s leadership position’s the ball seems to have landed in ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma’s court. New leaders will be elected at the ANC’s conference in December 2007.

The decision by Judge Herbert Msimang in the Pietermaritzburg High Court yesterday to strike Zuma’s corruption trial from the court roll has left many of his supporters believing that he will succeed as the next party president, and possibly as the president of the country as well.

Sixty-four-year-old Zuma was cleared last May in the Johannesburg High Court in an unrelated case of rape. After yesterdays decision in Pietermaritzburd, Cosatu called for Zuma’s reinstatement as the country's vice-president, a post from which he was sacked last year by President, Thabo Mbeki.

With the succession race on our doorstep, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and prominent businessman Cyril Ramaphosa have both denied that they have aspirations to the presidency, with Manuel citing that he is too attached to his freedom.

Ramaphosa is the man that Nelson Mandela originally wanted as his successor.