SOUTH AFRICA’S president, Thabo Mbeki, was toppled from power yesterday by his rival Jacob Zuma, president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), when its national executive committee took the decision to sack him.

Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, announced that the executive had “decided to recall the president of the republic before his term of office expires”.

Mbeki, 66, instructed his office to issue a statement saying: “The president has obliged and will step down after all constitutional requirements have been met.”

He may be allowed to linger in office a few days more so he can attend a meeting of the United Nations in New York this week and make his formal farewells to world leaders.

Mbeki accepted his political demise calmly, said Mantashe. “He did not display shock . . . He welcomed the news and agreed that he is going to participate in the process and the formalities.”

Nevertheless, it was a humiliation for the aloof, Sussex University-educated Mbeki, who has been president for nine years and largely ran the country during Nelson Mandela’s presidency before that.

The vote to oust him was the culmination of an epic power struggle between Mbeki, the ANC prince sent into exile for 28 years, and Zuma, also 66, the roughhewn farm boy who spent 10 years in jail on Robben Island.

Enemies have accused Mbeki of having a strong streak of paranoia and this seems to have motivated him in a campaign to destroy Zuma that has lasted for nearly a decade.

Mbeki has made it clear that he regards Zuma, a self-pro-claimed polygamist, with disdain as “a Zulu peasant” who will turn South Africa into “a neo-colonial basket case”.

Zuma once told The Sunday Times that when he became deputy president in 1999, Mbeki stripped the role of any real power. Within a year of taking office, Zuma discovered he was under investigation over corruption allegations linked to the purchase of frigates for the South African navy.

Fighting for his political career, Zuma was forced to go on television and pledge loyalty to Mbeki, convinced that he was behind the allegations. He came to suspect that Mbeki was using the police, intelligence services and prosecutors to undermine his position.

In 2005 Schabir Shaik, Zuma’s financial adviser, was convicted and jailed for 15 years over the allegations. The judge called the relationship between Zuma and Shaik a “mutually beneficial symbiosis”. Zuma, who has always maintained his innocence and was not prosecuted, was sacked by Mbeki and resigned as an MP.

Further public embarrassment, which he believes was also orchestrated by Mbeki, was to follow. Later that year charges were brought against Zuma accusing him of raping a 31-year-old Aids activist with whom he said he had a consensual sexual relationship. Zuma said he knew immediately that he had been caught in a honey-trap.

In May 2006 he was cleared of the charges after a trial in which he admitted he had not used a condom during sex with the woman, even though he knew her to be HIV positive. He said he had taken a shower to try to reduce his risk of infection.

While other potential rivals to Mbeki might have admitted defeat, Zuma resolved to fight back and began to organise a campaign inside the ANC that would eventually return him to high office. He barnstormed around the country, speaking to trade unionists, the Communist party and other left-wing groups and drawing wide support from his own Zulu tribe.

This coalition of the left proved potent and last December, by which time he was the country’s most popular politician, he defeated Mbeki in the election for party president.

The only shadow over his path to the country’s presidency was the corruption charges, which continued to dog him. Earlier this month he was vindicated when a judge, Chris Nicholson, discharged him from the latest case on the grounds that it had been repeatedly manipulated by Mbeki and his cabinet underlings.

For Blade Nzimande, the secretary-general of the Communist party that forms part of the ANC, this was proof the prosecutors were driven by “a political force” determined to “make Zuma’s ascendancy to the presidency as difficult and unpleasant as possible”.

Despite the provocations, Zuma has been cautious about calls to sack Mbeki, saying that to continue attacking his administration was like “beating a dead snake”.

But the party itself was determined to oust Mbeki before elections due next spring.

One member of the national executive said yesterday that although he had not initially wanted to force Mbeki out, he had changed his mind because he had become tired of “putting out fires Mbeki created for the new administration every day”.

Zuma tried repeatedly to meet Mbeki last week to discuss an orderly transition but was rebuffed as the president flew between Zimbabwe, where he had brokered a power-sharing deal that is rapidly falling apart, Sudan and his farm in KwaZulu-Natal. Mbeki seemed to be unable to face the inevitability of defeat at Zuma’s hands yesterday.

Radicals such as Julius Male-ma, president of the ANC Youth League, have been calling for Mbeki to be impeached, which would strip him of his pension and other benefits. Early elections are likely to be held in which Zuma is virtually assured of an easy victory.

Since Zuma is not an MP, Baleka Mbete, the speaker of parliament, is expected to be elected president temporarily to keep the seat warm for Zuma.

This fills some with alarm: Mbete is a fervent admirer of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Vene-zuela’s Hugo Chavez.

Zuma is anxious to avoid a wholesale exit of senior cabinet ministers – for his team is not yet ready to take over. He is particularly keen to retain Trevor Manuel, the powerful finance minister, and Tito Mbo-weni, governor of the Reserve Bank. Widespread ministerial resignations, Zuma fears, might provoke panic in Africa’s economic powerhouse.

In office Zuma will face a number of immediate challenges. On South Africa’s alarming crime statistics he has horrified some liberal supporters by suggesting the reintroduction of the death penalty, which has done nothing to dent his popularity in the country.

On the economy he has been careful to say nothing that will alarm business or overseas investors, but his supporters want radical left-wing policies, particularly on unemployment, which stands at 38%. He will have to face down calls for widespread nationalisation, protective tariffs on trade and laws that will demand full employment.

He will undoubtedly increase pressure on President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, having expressed solidarity with Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, and alarm at the brutality meted out by those in power.

Zuma’s biggest prize may be that he will now preside over the football World Cup in 2010. Many suspect the prospect of that moment of glory is what made Mbeki cling to office. For Zuma revenge will taste particularly sweet.

The rise of Zuma

- Born in 1942 in South Africa’s Zululand, Jacob Zuma received little education, working as a cattle herder and later as a kitchen boy in Durban

- Proud of his Zulu culture, he is a gifted raconteur, relishing stories of the Zulu wars against the British

- He joined the ANC’s military wing Umkhonto We Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) in 1962 but was captured and brutally beaten by police in 1963

- He was jailed for 10 years for conspiring to overthrow the apartheid regime and imprisoned with Nelson Mandela. His political education was nurtured in jail

- In exile in Zambia he was appointed head of the ANC’s intelligence wing. He returned in 1990 and became deputy president in 1999, but resigned six years later. He defeated Thabo Mbeki to become ANC leader last December

- Zuma was acquitted of rape in 2006 and was recently cleared of corruption, fraud, money-laundering and racketeering. The judge said that political interference lay behind the prosecution

The ousting of a leader

■ Defeated by Jacob Zuma in ANC leadership contest

■ Condemned for failing to get rid of Robert Mugabe

■ Accused of meddling in corruption case against Zuma

■ Ordered to resign by ANC’s national executive

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