When President Jacob Zuma went on a whirlwind tour of the continent, aggressively campaigning for a South African to be elected chair of the AU Commission, his critics suspected he was doing so to keep Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma out of the Union Buildings. It was 2011 and the ANC was scheduled to have its elective national conference the next year.Some party branches that were not happy with Zuma and the then-ANC deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, were mulling over nominating Dlamini-Zuma for the ANC presidency.But the campaign never got off the ground as it became clear that Zuma would be able to convince enough AU leaders to have Dlamini-Zuma elected commission head by October 2012.Her selection as AU Commission chair removed her as a threat to Zuma's bid for a second term as ANC leader and paved the way for Cyril Ramaphosa to be elected party deputy president.However, there are Zuma opponents in the ANC who believe that, far from keeping her out of the Union Buildings, the AU Commission detour was always part of a long-term strategy that would end in Dlamini-Zuma becoming her ex-husband's successor.story_article_left1Whatever theory one believes, Dlamini-Zuma has been a factor in the ANC presidential succession debate for a decade.When then-president Thabo Mbeki fired Zuma as his deputy in June 2005, it was to Dlamini-Zuma that he first turned for a replacement.She turned him down, apparently to avoid her children being conflicted as they were still hurt over how Mbeki fired their father.But that her presidential ambitions were strong became apparent two years later, when she turned down an opportunity to be on a Zuma slate for the ANC's Polokwane conference in favour of an Mbeki lineup.The Zuma faction, which eventually won that conference, nominated her for the post of ANC national chairperson, while the Mbeki faction put her name up for the deputy presidency.Although she lost out to Motlanthe in Polokwane, she remained an ANC national executive committee member, guaranteeing her a chance in future elections.That future has now come, with the ANC Women's League and sections of the party punting her name under the guise of a campaign for it to have its first woman president.Dlamini-Zuma seems well aware that it is now or never.If Ramaphosa's campaign strategy is to keep a low profile and wait for others to do the lobbying on his behalf, Dlamini-Zuma has adopted a more proactive approach.Although as AU Commission chairwoman she is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, full time, hardly a month goes by without Dlamini-Zuma coming to South Africa to address high-profile meetings.The trick seems to have worked: she received the most votes for the national executive committee of the ANC Women's League at its conference earlier this year and her name is mentioned along with Ramaphosa's every time succession is discussed.What counts against her in the race for the ANC presidency, however, is that Dlamini-Zuma is not in the party's top six.Since the party's unbanning in 1990, no one has ever been elected president without first serving in the top six in a different capacity.Moreover, her close ideological ties with Mbeki will scare off the ANC's leftist allies in the SACP and Cosatu, who are likely to see her prospective presidency as a return of the Mbeki era.But whether this grouping remains as influential as it was for most of the past decade remains to be seen, given that Cosatu recently suffered a major leadership split.story_article_right2Working in Dlamini-Zuma's favour is the women's league's support and the possibility that a woman presidential candidate could give the ANC's 2019 general elections campaign a new narrative with which to excite disillusioned voters.Dlamini-Zuma's record in government - as Nelson Mandela's health minister, Mbeki's foreign affairs minister and Zuma's home affairs minister - is impeccable.Even her critics agree that the general public perception of her is that of a hands-on and highly competent politician who has never been accused of corruption.However, her campaign could be damaged by its association with the so-called "premier league" - an alleged cohort of the premiers of the Free State, North West and Mpumalanga - trying to position itself as an ANC kingmaker.The premiers - Ace Magashule of the Free State, Supra Mahumapelo of North West and David Mabuza of Mpumalanga - have denied belonging to such a faction.But Dlamini-Zuma does not really need the "premier league" to win - all she requires is to unite her home province, KwaZulu-Natal, and the large sections of the Eastern Cape behind her campaign in the same way her ex-husband did in 2007.She has the Eastern Cape's OR Tambo region on her side and would tick KwaZulu-Natal as having been won if provincial secretary Sihle Zikalala beats the incumbent, Senzo Mchunu, for the post of chairman in a provincial election next month.With both KwaZulu-Natal and the women's league on her side, she could win the 2017 conference...