South Africa’s African National Congress announced that Cyril Ramaphosa, has been elected leader of the party
The 65 year old veteran ANC activist ran on an anti-corruption platform against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the former wife of current leader Jacob Zuma. He won by a margin of just 179 votes out of the more than 4,700 total ballots cast on Monday. Mr Zuma had been leader of the party since 2007.
The move sees Mr Ramaphosa likely to become South Africa’s next president, as the country gears towards elections scheduled for 2019.
As Deputy President of the ANC, Mr Ramaphosa was appointed Special Envoy to Sri Lanka in an effort to facilitate negotiations between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).
See more on the South African initiative in our feature:
Enter South Africa? (18 Apr 2014)
His work in his role as Special Envoy was opposed by Sinhala nationalist parties.
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