Party of Mandela, S.Africa's ANC marks 100 years

BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa (AFP) - South Africa's mighty African National Congress on Friday began celebrations for its centenary, still firmly at the helm of Nelson Mandela's all-race democracy despite losing some of its shine.

Africa's oldest liberation movement expects 46 heads of state for the bash marking its 100th anniversary Sunday, with 100,000 supporters set to flood into the normally placid central city of Bloemfontein.

"We are the oldest organisation in the continent," President Jacob Zuma told a cheering crowd after a walk-about Friday in Botshabelo around 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Bloemfontein.

"Many organisations have been created, born, established along the way and many have perished, have died, have collapsed. Not the ANC."

A golf tournament kicked off the three-day programme catering to the ANC's diverse members of billionaires and paupers, with events ranging from animal sacrifice and cleansing ceremony to a church service and concerts.

On Sunday, Zuma will address a mass rally at the start of a challenging year when he is bidding for re-election as party boss amid increasing internal threats to his leadership.

Supporters and international guests will be greeted by a city secured by police and the army and festooned with party colours and banners that also pay tribute the ANC's foreign supporters.

Mandela, who at 93 has not made a public appearance since July 2010, will be notably absent.

"He is not coming and we are not expecting him to come," party secretary general Gwede Mantashe told public radio SABC. "He is in good spirits but very, very old."

A night vigil and songs got underway on Friday in a marquee at the church where the party was founded on January 8, 1912, and where an ox and two goats were on site to be slaughtered in a traditional ceremony on Saturday morning.

"The purpose of the vigil is that traditionally, we would want to have the presence of God and then celebrate the heroes of the past and then also begin to pray about the future of the nation and not only the ANC," said Chief Livhuwani Matsila.

After inspiring a global anti-apartheid backlash, the ANC led South Africa peacefully into a "rainbow nation" in 1994 despite fears of civil war but has more recently faced criticism of abandoning its struggle roots.

The party was founded in Bloemfontein as the South African Native National Congress, and met crushing brutality from apartheid rulers who slapped it with a ban in 1960 and jailed its top leaders four years later.

Nearly 30 years on, the crumbling and isolated regime released icon Mandela to lead the country into its first all-race polls where the party has enjoyed huge wins ever since in regular polls.

In doing so, it has avoided the pitfalls of fellow African liberation movements which once rallied with the party, such as Mugabe's ZANU-PF in power in neighbouring Zimbabwe for 30 years.

But the ANC government has faced a rocky ride since the Mandela years. While the Nobel peace laureate is idealised into near-sainthood, critics bemoan the party as the shadow of a once-noble movement which has lost its moral compass.

The smears reach to the highest level with graft charges dropped against Zuma on the eve of his taking power in 2009, while abuse of taxpayers' money and reports of flashy lifestyles for the new elite make frequent headlines.

Economically, the party has drawn praise for steering Africa's biggest economy into safe waters, rolling out new electricity and water supplies, as well as houses. and inspiring a new black middle class.

But it has failed to direct the post-apartheid boom into the hands of the poor who bear the brunt of shoddy public hospitals and schools, a dangerously high joblessness rate of 25 percent, violent crime and life in grim shantytowns.