ANC Membership Audit a Boon to Mbeki
There was a very interesting development yesterday that could have a major impact on the succession debate. The membership audit of the ANC was published, which defines the provincial voting rights for the voting in of the party president in December.

The ANC currently has just 621 237 paid-up members (vastly below Cosatu's 1.8 million). The breakdown by province thought, is what's of interest. This is as follows:

Eastern Cape: 153164
KwaZulu-Natal has 102742
Limpopo 67632
Gauteng 59909
Free State 61310
Mpumalanga 54913
North West 47353
Northern Cape 37267
Western Cape 36 947

It is in this proportion that the provincial vote will be split, and guess who's up top, the Eastern Cape - Thabo Mbeki's stronghold. Not far behind though, is KZN, which is a Zuma stronghold, but the fact that the EC holds the most votes is a real boon to Mbeki's misguided (IMO) pursuit of the party presidency for a third term.

Time will tell, but follow murmurings coming out of the smaller regions (WC, NC, NW etc), because they may prove to be the critical swing voters either way.