JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) — South African president Thabo Mbeki narrowly won the first round in the battle for the future of the ruling ANC, but faces a bruising fight ahead as the divided party prepares to select new leaders. The African National Congress ended a key policy conference this week recommending no changes to the way the party elects its leadership, leaving the door open for Mbeki to stand again for party president at a congress in December.But the compromise decision masked deep disquiet over Mbeki’s plans in parts of the ANC already split over his market-friendly economic policies, which many say have left South Africa’s poor black majority behind. “The decision was a way of keeping everyone happy and postponing the decision (on leadership),” University of the Witwatersrand political analyst Susan Booysen said.

Mbeki is constitutionally barred from serving again as South Africa’s president when his current term expires in 2009. But he said on Saturday he could stand for leader of the ANC if the party asked, a move which would split power between the presidency and the party for the first time, and give Mbeki a major say in how South Africa is run for years to come. “Mbeki throws his hat into the ring”, the Sunday Independent newspaper said, noting that the succession battle was now wide open with at least two other candidates — ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma and politician-turned-tycoon Tokyo Sexwale — already openly campaigning for the job.

Any Mbeki bid to keep control of the ANC would defy tradition, which since Nelson Mandela led the victory against apartheid in 1994 has seen the party leader automatically named as its presidential candidate. Despite their decision not to block an Mbeki candidacy, delegates at the ANC policy conference also voiced a strong preference for keeping the two jobs together — a sign he may have a lot more convincing to do if he wants a third term.

Regularly commanding some two-thirds of the vote, the ANC is virtually assured of winning the national presidency in 2009. But the party has come under strain in recent months as its labour and Communist Party allies openly accused Mbeki of abandoning the ANC’s anti-apartheid era promises to the poor, most of whom remain mired in desperate conditions some 13 years after the end of white rule.

Last week’s ANC policy conference opened during a crippling civil servants’ strike over low pay and benefits, underscoring growing anger in the powerful labour movement. The COSATU labour federation said on Sunday it believed most ANC rank-and-file members stood behind labour’s demands and that the party “remains first and foremost a liberation movement with a bias towards the working class”.

While deeper arguments rumble over the ANC’s ideological direction, the leadership race has crystallised opinion largely around the personalities of the major candidates. Mbeki, who has led South Africa since 1999, is admired for his grasp of policy and international acumen but often depicted as a cool technocrat more comfortable hob-nobbing with business leaders than with South Africa’s impoverished rural electorate.

His chief rival, Jacob Zuma, is widely popular but remains shadowed by a corruption case that spurred Mbeki to sack him as national deputy president in 2005. Zuma, who calls the corruption allegations a political vendetta, was also campaigning last week, telling union supporters the future of South Africa’s revolution was at stake. “They (revolutions) can either go forward or move sideways, depending on which side they move to. Or they can collapse,” he said, adding that he himself was a son of the working class.

Zuma’s message has not been accompanied by any specific policy suggestions. But it is gaining traction with a recent study showing the bulk of his support among people who make less than 4,400 rand ($621) per month. Sexwale, the third major candidate thus far, is a long-time ANC activist who left politics for business and quickly became one of South Africa’s richest men.

Imprisoned on the notorious Robben Island with Mandela, Sexwale’s savvy media instincts have seen him host a local reality television show and become a regular fixture at glamourous parties. He is an economic centrist on the Mbeki model but with a far more populist approach — he can sell the same policies with a smile, and has a brilliant ‘common touch’ that Mbeki lacks.