South Africa

JOHANNESBURG - South African President Jacob Zuma's fathering of an illegitimate child has hit his chances of running for a second term, with some African National Congress (ANC) heavyweights saying that his sex life is damaging the party's image. Zuma, who has three wives, has apologised for fathering the child with Sonono Khoza, the daughter of close friend Irvin Khoza, who heads the local organising committee for this year's FIFA World Cup. The child is Zuma's twentieth. Publicly, the ruling ANC has backed the 67-year-old but, in private, senior party members feel the latest in a long of sexual scandals is the last straw. "He is becoming too much of a liability to the party and his image is damaging," a member of the ANC's national executive committee, who does not want to be named, says. "Polygamy and promiscuity are not the same thing." In 2006, Zuma was cleared of raping an HIV-positive woman, but admitted during the trial he had unprotected sex with her even though he knew she had the virus. Even before the love-child scandal broke, Zuma's chances of being the next Presidential candidate hung in the balance. The latest incident can only have weighed against him. The ANC elects a new leader in 2012, and South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande - now Zuma's Higher Education Minister - and powerful trade union movement leader Zwelinzima Vavi appear to be lining up a bid for the top position.

JOHANNESBURG - Mine nationalisation in South Africa is not an imminent policy threat, nor even a fully-fledged policy consideration. But the debate could be important in helping to shape the future leadership dynamics within the governing African National Congress (ANC), Control Risks senior Southern Africa analyst Anne Fruehauf says. Briefing the media on the international risk consultancy's annual RiskMap 2010, Fruehauf barely refers to the prospect of nationalisation. In her formal presentation, she says only that, in the context of hosting the FIFA World Cup, there will probably be an attempt, during the course of the year, to downplay issues such as the debate on nationalisation, service delivery discord and the ongoing difficulties in Zimbabwe, so as to "not disrupt the big party". Fruehauf avers: "[The nationalisation debate is] all about internal party dynamics. It's all about players positioning themselves ahead of 2012, [the ANC's next conference to elect its office bearers]," adding that, at this stage, it is not a concrete policy debate. "At this stage, nationalisation is in no way imminent," Fruehauf stresses. But the debate might serve to "crystallise a lot of the internal power struggles" between the three main factions in the ANC - the left, the nationalists/populists and the business component. The issue of nationalisation has been given impetus by the ANC Youth League and its controversial president, Julius Malema, but has been dismissed as a policy option by Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu, who told mining investors in early February that nationalisation would not take place "in my lifetime".

Africa & the world

THE HAGUE - A verdict in the long war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor is not expected until the end of this year, although the defence is cutting back on witnesses, a prosecutor says. Taylor, 62, denies all 11 charges of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers during intertwined wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in which more than 250 000 people were killed. His trial by the United Nations-backed court for Sierra Leone, in The Hague, officially opened in June 2007, but was almost immediately adjourned after Taylor boycotted proceedings and fired his legal team. It began in earnest in January 2008. Acting prosecutor, Joseph Kamara, of Sierra Leone, says in an interview he is "optimistic that, by the end of this year, we should see a closure to this case". Any appeal could take three to four more months, he adds. The original prosecutor, American Stephen Rapp, says that a year ago he expected a verdict early this year, a target that was later put back to mid-2010. But Taylor's own evidence has dragged on.