(Bloomberg) -- South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa appears to be ahead in the race to become leader of the ruling African National Congress, but his victory is far from certain, according to an early tally of party branch nominations by one of the country's leading research institutions.
Thus far, 773 of about 3,830 ANC branches have nominated Ramaphosa, while 410 have backed his main rival, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the former chairwoman of the African Union Commission and President Jacob Zuma's ex-wife, the Johannesburg-based South African Institute of Race Relations said in a report.
It estimates that about 63 percent of about 2,650 branches that have yet to select a preferred candidate are in areas thought to be sympathetic to Dlamini-Zuma, a factor that could tip the race in her favor.
When the ANC decides who will succeed Zuma as its president at a conference in Johannesburg next month, at least 90 percent of voting delegates will come from its branches. The ANC's next leader will also be its presidential candidate in elections scheduled for 2019, when Zuma is due to step down.
“The best available current data leave the race too close for us to call with certainty and observers should be hedged for both outcomes,” Frans Cronje, the institute's chief executive officer, said in the report. “The data as it stands seems to lean towards a Ramaphosa victory, although intuitively we remain alive to a Dlamini-Zuma victory.”
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Ramaphosa, 64, has called for a clampdown on corruption and is the clear favorite among investors, as well as labor unionists and the South African Communist Party. Dlamini-Zuma, 68, has echoed Zuma's calls for “radical economic transformation” to give the black majority a bigger share of the country's wealth and has won support from her ex-husband, and the ANC's women's, youth and military veterans leagues.
Read more here about how the ANC chooses its leaders.
The institute said its analysis must be treated with caution since delegates may not necessarily vote as their branches instructed. Branch and delegate numbers also didn't tally, and some larger branches that can send more than one delegate to the conference backed Dlamini-Zuma, it said.
The institute's nomination tallies are similar to those collated by the Johannesburg-based Mail & Guardian, which reported that of the 1,138 that had completed the process by Nov. 2, 768 backed Ramaphosa and 360 supported Dlamini-Zuma. The ANC has 3,800 branches in good standing, the newspaper said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Cohen in Cape Town at mcohen21@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Karl Maier at kmaier2@bloomberg.net, Gordon Bell
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