Meet the new boss - same as the old boss?

Listening to Radio 4’s The World Tonight, and the two top stories are both internal party election results.

Fighting his way to the top of the ANC - Jacob Zuma

You couldn’t get much more different. On the one hand, Britain’s Liberal Democrats – Westminster’s perennial third party, who last had a seat around the cabinet table during Churchill’s wartime coalition. They’ve chosen the (relatively speaking) young Nick Clegg by a narrow margin, over his challenger Chris Huhne.

On the other hand, South Africa’s former deputy president Jacob Zuma has triumphed overwhelmingly over the nation’s sitting president, Thabo Mbeki, for the leadership of the ANC. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa has become effectively a democratic one party state and the leadership contest’s outcome has profound implications for a country shaping up as a significant force on the world stage.

But while an ANC leader has a surer route to the reins of power than a Lib-Dem one, it’s the former party that is tonight described as being in crisis. Zuma is a populist and immensely controversial – no less than former Archbishop Desmond Tutu had urged party members to reject him. Although cleared, as a defendant in a recent rape trial he was subject to personally damaging revelations, while he remains at risk of corruption charges over a multimillion-dollar arms deal.

Commentators made clear their dissatisfaction over the choice of two old-guard ANC figures, each with stains on their political records. Mbeki has alienated his natural supporters over AIDS, Zimbabwe, inequality, crime and his overall aloofness. A compromise candidate from the ranks of younger ANC politicians could not be settled upon.

And the Lib-Dems? Although a tad tetchy at times, the Clegg v Huhne stand-off saw nothing like the bitterness of Mbeki v Zuma. But most important is that tonight Lib Dems seem confident they can offer something genuinely fresh to the UK electorate. Both Clegg and Huhne are fairly new faces, only taking their seats in 2005. Both have been big on statements about breaking the mould. Vince Cable has impressed enormously in the interregnum as acting leader, but after the sometimes downright ageist mauling handed out to Ming Campbell, I think the party has done the right thing by skipping a generation.

As for the sniping that ‘Calamity Clegg’ (not my phrase, but a Huhne campaign staffer) is a bit of a lightweight – remember, perceptions of party leaders are often different when they leave their posts from when they take them up. Tony Blair was laughed off as ‘Bambi’ in some quarters in 1994…

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