The African National Congress (ANC) was yesterday struggling to contain the fallout from the guilty verdict in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial.

The fallout looks set to engulf the ANC as well as President Thabo Mbeki in his capacity as both ANC head and SA’s leader.

The country will be looking to Mbeki to see how he manages the fallout and responds to mounting opposition calls for him to axe Deputy President Jacob Zuma, whose political future is becoming increasingly untenable as the full effect of the conviction starts to sink in.

The ANC said in a statement yesterday it had “noted” the court’s finding, and would study the judgment.

However, the party’s statement seemed to belie the deep divisions caused by the Shaik trial in its ranks by pointedly not commenting on the implications of the judge’s findings on Zuma.

Shaik’s conviction on two counts of corruption and one count of fraud relating to irregular financial dealings with Zuma places the deputy president in the middle of a corruption scandal that threatens to compound the organisation’s succession dilemma.

To date the ANC has consistently invoked Zuma’s right to be protected, given that he was not on trial.

However, the party will have to strike a balance between not violating Zuma’s right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, while also sending the right anticorruption message to the public, international markets and the ANC’s constituency.

The process could threaten the “soul” of the organisation if not handled carefully.

Factions in the ANC are also likely to view any outcome through the prism of succession, as the organisation battles to identify a suitable successor to Mbeki as ANC president in 2007.

Should Shaik appeal against the judgment ­ which is likely ­ this could drag on possibly up to and past the ANC’s 2007 conference, where the ANC’s yet-unresolved succession race will be decided.

Adam Habib, an executive director of the Democracy and Governance Research Programme of the Human Sciences Research Council, says Zuma’s supporters have long contended the outcome of the Shaik trial is not the result of a neutral process.

“Zuma has to take the nation into his confidence; failure to do so weakens his chances of attaining the top job in the party,” Habib says.

He says that if Zuma is out of the running because he fails to reinvent himself after the Shaik trial, the succession door will be thrown wide open for other candidates to emerge.

“If the ANC elders step in and come up with a compromise candidate that will satisfy both Zuma and the Mbeki factions, then people like Cyril Ramaphosa and Kgalema Motlanthe stand a real chance again,” Habib says.

And if both factions feel disempowered, the party goes into “free-fall”, pitting factions against each other as they jostle for power and influence.

However, if the ANC were to act against Zuma, it would open a political Pandora’s box that could prove damaging.

The ANC has recently been hit by a string of allegations pointing to a problematic relationship between itself and business.

Zuma’s supporters are bound to wonder why their man is being singled out.

But failure to act against him in the light of such damaging findings would give credence to charges that the ANC has succumbed to cronyism.

Prominent ANC members are often the recipients of headline-grabbing black economic empowerment deals.

Mbeki faces the difficult task of having to act as president of the ANC and head of state.

He will want to defend the ANC’s unity at all costs, but also has a constitutional duty to protect the integrity of the presidency.

Summary dismissal of Zuma is unlikely though, given that the legal process is far from over.

Any move by Mbeki against Zuma will also be interpreted inside the ANC as a pre-emptive strike against a rival.

But Mbeki is not immune to international pressure, says Habib.

Always keen to debunk notions that SA will become another African basket case, Mbeki is mindful of the damage already done to Zuma on the global stage.

Should Zuma be tainted further, the president will have difficulty selling a post-Mbeki SA as a credible investment destination.

This could undo his own legacy of economic stability and sustained growth.

But Mbeki is also a politician with an agenda, and has his own preference for the succession.

Damage to Zuma may not necessarily be a bad thing if it opens the way for an Mbeki-anointed candidate to take over as frontrunner.

A weakened Zuma also leaves the organisation’s left wing without an obvious champion.

So far Zuma has got away with shrugging off allegations of corruption, but in light of Shaik’s conviction he will now have to calculate his options carefully. There is no doubt that in the ANC and its allies, Zuma’s stock has only risen throughout the Shaik debacle.

But the court of public opinion has been less forgiving.

Analysts warn that a massive “name-cleaning” operation will have to be launched if Zuma is to survive this period to assume leadership of the ANC in 2007 and the ultimate office in 2009.

The deputy president, who has consistently argued that he was denied his day in court, may now find himself in the dock. If he is charged, he will have to step down whatever the outcome. But eventual rehabilitation is not totally out of the question.

With acknowledgements to Vukani Mde, Karima Brown and the Business Day.