SOUTH AFRICA:AFRICAN NATIONAL Congress leader Jacob Zuma has said if he is elected South Africa's president in next year's general election his preference would be to serve only one term in office.
Mr Zuma, who secured the ANC leadership last November following a bitter power struggle with current South African president Thabo Mbeki, is widely expected to secure the country's top political position come March next year because of his party's electoral dominance.
In an interview with a newspaper on Sunday he said that while one term was his preference, if the ANC indicated it wanted him to stand for a second, he would prepare for the transition of power before the end of that five-year period. "I would prefer to leave after one term. Even if it is not one term, I think in the second term I should be able to begin the process of winding down. I would allow open debate, not make people guess what is going to happen in terms of succession.
"This would allow the organisation [the ANC] to indicate what it wants. But if it was me deciding, if the ANC had made me president of the country [I would prefer one term]," he told the Sunday Independent.
Mr Zuma also said presidential powers needed to be decentralised and a more effective management style should be introduced to deal with government officials and politicians who fail to do their jobs properly. "If a government is able to deliver, you then have to have people who must be able to do their work. And if somebody is failing to do his or her work then they must not be kept there."
Mr Zuma's plans mark a departure from Mr Mbeki's way of doing business. He was reluctant to sack incompetent officials that were loyal, and tended to keep power centralised within the presidency rather than in the ANC leadership.
It is widely believed that Mr Zuma's ambitions for the presidency can only be derailed if he is found guilty on corruption and fraud charges relating to a government arms deal with French arms manufacturers Thint in the late 1990s.
Next week he is taking an application to the High Court to have those charges struck out on the grounds that warrants obtained n 2005 to confiscate incriminating documents from his house were not issued legally.