Dirk Coetzee died on 7 February unfulfilled, feeling betrayed by his new best friends in the ANC. But, as Pusch Commey reports, who could trust a man to whom life, death, right and wrong were just words, with no meaning? And whose hands dripped with so much blood.

South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has stayed more or less intact for the better part of a 100 years. But can the party meet the challenges of the 21st century? asks Xolela Mangcu.

Some members of the ANC believe they will rule until the second coming of Christ. In 2008, Milton Morema, the mayor of Bushbuckridge, told an ANC-SACP rally that “the ANC will rule this country until Jesus Christ comes back home”. But, despite such confidence, a new book shows that the ANC does not have such absolute power in South Africa; it has other alternative centres of power to contend with.

South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), will in a few month’s time, hold its elective conference to decide who leads the party in the general election fixed for 2014. Already daggers are drawn for the incumbent, President Jacob Zuma, who is determined to have a second term. But with his enemies gathering for war in addition to a media backlash, will Zuma, the man who has shown himself to be a wily political survivor with help from friends, survive? In this report, our South African correspondent, Pusch Commey, looks at all the permutations and predicts that the world will witness a factional dogfight that will make Polokwane (the ANC’s last elective conference in 2007 that dethroned ex-President Thabo Mbeki) look like an afternoon walk in the park.

What was the fundamental objective of the African National Congress (ANC) when it was formed in 1912? Did ACN leaders, especially those from 1955 onwards, pursue the primary goal of the 1912 vision envisaged by the founding fathers? Does the present ANC have the same objectives as the 1912 ANC?

South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) turned 100 on 8 January 2012 and organised a lavish celebration in the city of Mangaung (formally Bloemfontein) where it all began in the Welsleyan Church on 8 January 1912. As the continent's oldest liberation party, it is a significant milestone in the history of the fight against colonialism and physical and economic oppression on the continent. But as the champagne glasses clicked, one message was clear above the din: the black man, like all others, cannot live by political freedom alone.

As the South African media and opposition parties united against a new Protection of Information Bill introduced by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Udo W. Froese argues that the media brought the strictures of the new bill upon itself as it has been out of control for too long.

He has been described as “a loose cannon with a lot of valid points”, “the wrong messenger for the right message”, “an activist who hears ideas and if this or that takes his fancy, he runs with it.”  He is only 30 years old and has only 12 years of high school education. So how come this young man, called Julius Malema, is able to create such excitement in South Africa to the extent that all the political parties in the country, including his own ANC of which he is the president of the Youth League, have teamed up against him.

The former president of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), Julius Malema, became the first prominent casualty of political war when he was slapped with a five-year suspension by the South African ruling party. This was at the end of a disciplinary hearing that started in September and concluded on 11 November 2011. What does the future hold for the young firebrand?