After a bruising battle that engaged ordinary South Africans in a manner reminiscent of the heady combination of fear and hope that galvanised the country after Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years of incarceration in 1990, Mandela's ruling African National Congress party has chosen a new leader to try to lift the country’s veil of sleaze.
Cyril Ramaphosa, at present serving as a deputy to the controversial and widely-despised President Jacob Zuma, is now the shoo-in as the party’s candidate to become South Africa’s next president in 2019, should the ANC win that general election. Publicly embraced as the anti-corruption saviour of a country deeply divided by the sleaze of Zuma’s two-term administration, Ramaphosa’s victory finally dashes Zuma's hopes of installing his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, as his successor.