Maybe it was just a harmless aside that means absolutely nothing. Still, when I read that South Africa’s Kgalema Motlanthe recently said that Jacob Zuma would drop out of the race for the presidency if he thought it for the best for the country, my jaw dropped.

Motlanthe was asked on Tuesday night by an audience member at an ANC rally in Lenasia (south of Johannesburg) if Motlanthe’s continuing as president would not be better for the country than Zuma given Zuma’s corruption charges. Motlanthe gave a spirited defense of Zuma. But then he said “We know that without any doubt in my mind, that if, at whatever point, he believes that the interests of the ANC and the country can better be served by his stepping down, he will be the first one to say so.”

One wonders whether Zuma has even vaguely entertained the idea of ever standing down. And one wonders whether Motlanthe’s assertion, couched in the terms of vigorous support for Zuma, does not represent something of a trial balloon.

In an interview with SABC on Sunday South African President Kgalema Motlanthe suggested that perhaps Zimbabwe could adopt the rand as its currency. What he surely means (or what I hope he means, if this gains traction, anyway) was that at some point down the road, under the right conditions, Zimbabwe could tie the Zimbabwean dollar to the rand much like Namibia pegs its dollar and Botswana pegs the pula to the rand.

For now Zimbabwean officials deny that any such plans are afoot — which is obviously true —  but at some point down the road Zimbabwe is going to have to come to grips with its currency, and having it tied to the rand, and thus rationalizing the region’s currency much as the Euro has done for Europe does not seem like the worst idea. Obviously it would be a poison pill for South Africa to swallow any such plan now, but down the road, when Zimbabwe’s money is not worthless and when political stability fuels economic stability, South Africa will be called upon to help its neighbor across the Limpopo. Rationalizing currency values will surely be on the table.

allAfrica has the full text of President Kgalema Motlanthe's State of the Nation Address.

The latest developments in Zimbabwe fall into the grimly familiar narrative. There are signs of hope that there will finally be a breakthrough — in this case Thabo Mbeki, who still represents the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Zim talks, and South African President Kgalema Motlanthe touch down in Zimbabwe in hopes of kick-starting talks. Before any meaningful progress is made Robert Mugabe refuses to yield on issues that are fundamental to coming to an agreement. The talks stall on the way to failure, and participants (most notably Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change) and observers alike despair.

Perhaps something will come along to push the talks forward and forge an agreement. At this stage, however, it is difficult to imagine what form that deus ex machina will take.  

In recent weeks South Africa's newly established African National Congress dissident party, the Congress of the People (COPE), has dominated the political discussion and thus in many meaningful ways has won the news cycle. The ANC has consistently fought back, but have consistently appeared to be reacting to COPE rather than actively controlling the agenda. This appears to be changing.

Thousands of ANC supporters met at a party rally in East London on Saturday, providing a reminder not only of the ANC's strength in the party's historic Eastern Cape strongholds, but of its ability to mobilize supporters in massive numbers across the country. At the rally the party presented its election manifesto. To use a boxing metaphor, the ANC is the undisputed champion of South African politics. COPE will have to take the title by knockout, because the ANC will not go down in a split decision.  

At the rally Jacob Zuma's supporters reaffirmed their commitment to their man, despite his still tenuous status in the eyes of the National Prosecuting Authority, which seems determined to reinstate corruption charges against Zuma if it loses a Supreme Court challenge the decision for which should be announced on Monday. A defeat would almost certainly provide a blow to the NPA, and in that case it would be increasingly likely that Zuma would seek a deal to make the worst of the charges against him disappear.

If something were to go awry for Zuma, Kgalema Motlanthe has proved to be both capable as interim president and loyal to the ANC and would almost certainly provide the party with a logical successor to Zuma to represent the party in the elections later this year. In many ways a Motlanthe candidacy might prove more formidable than that of the divisive Zuma, who seems to inspire deep loyalty in some circles and equally deep loathing in others.  

Robert Mugabe is using allegations (most of which appear to be of his own creation) of a plot against ZANU-PF leaders as justification to engage in what The Mail & Guardian is calling “a new, bloody, crackdown” on the opposition. Given that Mugabe and his spokespeople are blaming the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for being behind the supposed machinations it is hard to imagine that this saber rattling will be good for the already dormant negotiation process. 

Mugabe's latest gnashing of teeth also ought to (once again) put paid to the idea that the world should just wait before acting against Mugabe, holding out hope instead for the negotiations to succeed. This is South African President Kgalema Motlanthe's continued untenable stand. Contra South Africa's official policy, rumors have swirled that Botswana has been behind schemes to overthrow Mugabe, and while Botswanan officials deny the allegations, the very fact of their plausible existence tells us a great deal about the differences between South Africa and Botswana on the Zimbabwe issue.

Kgalema Motlanthe has rejected as unnecessary calls for an investigation of the arms deal, which increasingly threatens to undermine the ANC even further at a time when the ruling party needs all the help it can get. It seems certain that between the work of the Scorpions, the investigations of the media, and probes from other parties, not to mention trials of the accused, the full story will eventually emerge. It might be best for Motlanthe, Jacob Zuma, and the ANC to champion openness and take what damage might be coming to it rather than to add a lack of transparency and attempts to obfuscate or cover up corruption.

Recent polling data indicates that South Africans simply have no real sense of who Kgalema Motlanthe is or what he stands for. This is exactly as Jacob Zuma would like it, as a cipher as placeholder in the office of the president only strengthens Zuma's claim on the position. The Congress of the People is poised to present enough of a challenge to the ANC that name recognition will be a huge factor in the 2009 election. The ANC is thus going to rely on both the brand name and emphasize the good elements of Zuma's renown while at the same time planting the seed in the minds of voters that COPE is an unknown quantity.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African president FW de Klerk have written to President Kgalema Motlanthe requesting that he set up an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the arms deal that has so shaped and warped the current South African political climate. It is hard to imagine what rationale Motlanthe or the ANC might use to refuse such a request, which, of course, says nothing about whether or not the requested inquiry will happen.

Today marks the deadline for the new Congress of the People (Cope) to respond in writing to the ANC's legal demands that the new organization change its name. The ANC's attempts to force a name change from Core strikes me as a petty and frivolous nuisance. It would be hard for the ANC to claim that it has all proprietary political claims to the word “Congress,” given the presence of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) both historically and in its greatly diminished current manifestation.

It strikes me that right now the ANC has far more important matters to attend to, what with the very existence of the breakaway party embodying the severe schisms within the ruling party and the fact that ANC leaders, including Jacob Zuma, continue to eat their own. The latest example of this trend is the fact that Jacob Zuma quite transparently sees the presidency as rightly his, not Kgalema Mothlante's, justifying the recent Democratic Alliance jibe that Mothlante is but a “seat-warmer” for Zuma.