SOUTH AFRICA: ANC NATIONAL CONFERENCE: NOMINATIONS UPDATE

Описание: (17 Dec 1997) English/Nat

In the second day of the ruling party conference in South Africa, it's decision time for the delegates.

They have to nominate candidates for the positions of president and deputy president of the A-N-C.

Particular interest surrounds the progress of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the controversial ex-wife of South African president, Nelson Mandela.

The five-day conference that began on Tuesday will choose new A-N-C leaders to guide the party through the next national election in 1999 and into the new century.

Deputy President Thabo Mbeki is expected to be the only candidate to succeed Mandela as A-N-C president. Mandela will remain president of the country until the 1999 national elections.

But his ex-wife is also campaigning for election.

Supporters of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela surrounded her on Wednesday when she arrived at the African National Congress conference in Mafikeng to make a final bid for a top post.

While the celebratory mood indicated support for her bid to become the A-N-C deputy president, Madikizela-Mandela was been shut out of the formal nominations for the post.

She needs a floor nomination on Wednesday to run against national chairman Jacob Zuma.

Madikizela-Mandela was divorced from Mandela last year and has long been ostracised by the mainstream A-N-C leadership because of her breaches of party discipline and accusations that she ordered her bodyguards to carry out murders and torture in the late 1980s.

However, she has remained a revered anti-apartheid heroine to many grassroots supporters, especially downtrodden black women and youths, who consider her a victim of an A-N-C elite who went into exile while she remained in the country to face police harassment.

She has easily kept her post as head of the A-N-C Women's League and finished in the top five in voting for the A-N-C leadership at its previous national conference in 1994.

Under traditional A-N-C voting requirements Madikizela-Mandela needs the support of at least 10 per cent of the 3,064 delegates in a show of hands to secure a nomination.

Even so, proposed A-N-C rule changes would lift the threshold to 25 per cent and could require those backing the nomination to sign seconding petitions.

The rule changes are expected to be heard prior to the nominations later on Wednesday, but not all delegates approve.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"As it is stated clearly stated in the A-N-C constitution that if a person qualifies like comrade Winnie she's a member of the African National Congress and we as delegates we strongly feel that comrade Winnie should contest that particular seat and the constitution allows her to participate in that."
SUPER CAPTION: Winnie Supporter

Results are expected to be announced on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Mandela made several clear references to his ex-wife as an undesirable candidate for a leadership post in his farewell speech to the conference.

But on Wednesday on his arrival to the conference, he refused to be drawn into questions to clarify that position, and spoke falteringly only to answer how he thought the conference had gone so far.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Well, I think it is too early to answer that question but there is nothing which makes us concerned at all. We are satisfied with the progress."
SUPER CAPTION: Nelson Mandela, South African President

A successful floor nomination and subsequent victory over Zuma would make Madikizela-Mandela the party's second-ranking official behind Mbeki and could position her to become deputy president of the country in 1999.



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