photo:(zuma to ousted come mangaung)

Johannesburg – If it was a declaration of a bid to become president of South Africa, it was a very strange one.

After weeks of speculation that he is lining up a challenge to President Jacob Zuma in an African National Congress (ANC) leadership election in December, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe attracted a packed house at the launch of an official biography on Thursday night.

To the hundreds of supporters jammed into the auditorium at Johannesburg’s Wits University, his remarks were affirmation that Motlanthe is taking up the mantle of an “Anyone But Zuma” campaign dividing the ruling party in Africa’s biggest economy.

To the less partisan observer, his comments were more notable for their obscurity and ambiguity, even by the standards of a 100-year-old liberation movement with a habit of talking in code forged in the long underground struggle against apartheid.

Foregoing the chance to comment on the labour unrest sweeping through the mining sector, Motlanthe – once head of the biggest mining union – instead embarked on a rambling anecdote about alternative learning techniques that he had seen this week on an official visit to a school in Italy.

“From a very early age, these children will learn that things are always changing,” he said, to cheers from supporters for whom “change” means “challenge to Zuma” at the ANC conference in Mangaung, near Bloemfontein.

With a wry smile, Motlanthe then professed his ignorance of the double entendre. “The irony is really lost on me,” he said, to laughter from the hall.

Motlanthe, a bearded and bespectacled 63-year-old, exudes a solidity that reassures the business community.

He has already had one brief stint as president following the ANC’s unceremonious ejection of Thabo Mbeki, mid-term, in 2008, although he did little more than serve as a place-holder for Zuma.

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