The end of the ANC
In an unlikely twist of plot, the beginning of the end for the ANC has begun in neighbouring Harare and not in Cape Town. Mbeki's stupidly blind support of his tribal and political ally Mugabe has resulted in the beginning of a split within the ANC. The ANC is a triparthied alliance of trade unions, political intellectuals, and the South African Communist Party. For the past fifteen years, Mandela was able to hold this alliance together using strong moral authority; however, with Mandela fading, the political squabbling has begun.
Firstly the ANC has strong ties to Mugabe, one from a political point of view, where Mugabe (the father of the African revolution) provided safe harbouring for ANC and PAC dissidents during the Apartheid years, and the other from a tribal point of view where Mbeki (former ANC leader and current RSA president) has an ethnic relationship to Mugabe, where both come from the same tribal side of the fence from the brutal pre-colonial wars under Zulu Mfecane.
Secondly Zuma, the ANC's new and hugely popular Zulu leader and likely next South African president, has no tribal or historical loyalty to Mugabe, he is popular with the trade union movement that dominated the ANC alliance, and he has strong business dealings with whites and upper class blacks. He is largely disliked by the ANC party brass and intelligencia, which tends to support Mbeki and his pro Mugabe policies.
When Zuma becomes the next president of South Africa - despite Mbeki's plan to lower the voting age to 16 in a populist attempt to help a handpicked Zuma opponent - he will likely tread hard on Mugabe, impose an MDC government, and effectively shatter the ANC into three pieces: Intelligencia, Communist or Pan African Congress, and the trade unions. This three way split will cede several new political parties, creating an unpredicatable situation in a country with so many linguistic, ethnic, and socio-economic groups.
What will follow is completely impossible to predict; however, the divisions within the ANC - so sharply displayed in the increasingly violent Zimbabwean crisis - are a clear sign that Jacob Zuma will be the last ANC president of the Republic of South Africa.