South Africans vote for ANC leader today

Voting began today in the bitter battle to become next leader of the African National Congress.

South African President Thabo Mbeki is expected to lose the party leadership to Jacob Zuma, the current deputy when the results are announced tomorrow or the day after.

Their rivalry has seen delegates to the party conference booing, singing partisan songs and challenging attempts by the old guard to keep the process decorous.

During the decades it was an underground movement fighting apartheid, the ANC prided itself on presenting a unified front. The top party post has not been publicly contested in 55 years.

As the conference opened yesterday, delegates loyal to Mr Zuma booed leaders seen as Mbeki allies, carried pictures of Mr Zuma despite a ban on partisan displays, and called for national chairman Mosiuoa Lekota's removal.

Today delegates sang and chanted the praises of their candidates during rallies as they made their way into the huge white tent erected for the conference.

Some waved their hands in three-fingered salutes, indicating they wanted a third term for Mr Mbeki, while Mr Zuma's supporters signalled their desire for change by rolling one hand over another, as if to call for a substitute during a football game.

Cabinet minister and Mbeki supporter Mluleki George told one rally that Zuma supporters in the conference tent the day before were "demonstrating before they get to power that there is going to be anarchy".

Fikile Mbalula, president of the ANC Youth League, which has been a strong Zuma supporter, urged discipline.

During the nomination process last month in the ANC's provincial and other internal bodies, Mr Zuma was far ahead of Mr Mbeki.

It was a remarkable political comeback after a rape trial - which ended with his acquittal but left lingering questions about his judgment - and a pending investigation for corruption.

The left in particular has embraced Mr Zuma, counting on him to deliver houses, jobs and services to a black majority still impoverished 13 years after South Africa's first all-race elections ended apartheid.

That reflects frustration with Mr Mbeki's approach, which has been to rely on pro-market policies to lift South Africa's economy, and with it lift the poor.

Mr Zuma has called for AIDS and crime to be "treated as national emergencies," something many South Africans have criticised Mr Mbeki for not doing.

On foreign policy, Mr Zuma has challenged Mr Mbeki for insisting on quiet diplomacy over confrontation with neighbouring Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe is accused of ruining the economy, undermining democracy, and threatening the region's stability.

Much has been made of the personality and class differences between the two me, former allies who are both 65 and spent years in exile during apartheid.

If Mr Zuma wins, he would be in line to be the party's candidate for president of the country in the 2009 elections. The ANC candidate would likely win, given the party's wide support.

Mr Mbeki is barred by the constitution from seeking a third term as president of Africa's political and economic powerhouse. But remaining at the helm of the ANC would give him a say in who succeeds him and in the policies his successor adopts.