President Jacob Zuma's state visit to Britain was pomp and ceremony at its British best, but it had a lot more to do with economics than with carriages and queens, Westminster Abbey, the young wife of the polygamist Zuma being driven around by Camilla in a Rolls, and the spectacle of Zuma, flanked by the Duke of Edinburgh (wearing a weird top hat), jointly reviewing the troops.

The oblique advice the Queen had for Zuma was to steer his country's economics along orthodox lines. In return, the bonds between the two countries would strengthen.

The Queen reminded Zuma that he would be attending the United Kingdom/South Africa Business Seminar "which will illustrate the great depth of our trading relationship. Recognising that, even in unsettled economic times, London remains a global centre for trade, finance and international growth, some 600 South African companies have invested here. In return, British investment has played a significant part in South Africa's rise as a major emerging economy."

The question now is: having survived all manner of perils in his 67-year-life, can Zuma survive the present fierce infighting for power between the four pit bulls over the presidency - ANC, Cosatu, SACP and the ANCYL? Whoever wins the struggle controls Zuma. The ANC and ANCYL are teamed on one side and Cosatu/SACP on the other.

Ex-President Thabo Mbeki could have written the script for the unfolding scene. What Zuma is experiencing now, Mbeki encountered when he returned to South Africa from exile in 1990. The consternation at the time among businessmen, foreign institutions and governments was over the economic direction South Africa's Tripartite Alliance (ANC, Cosatu, SACP) should take. Orthodox or - Left? The same unease prevails today.

As William Mervyn Gumede wrote in Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC: "Never before had a government in waiting been so seduced by the international community.  Both the World Bank and the IMF sought to influence the ANC's economic policy, frequently warning against pursuing ‘unorthodox' policies."

Zuma no doubt has read and re-read the chapter in Gumede's book, Was the ANC Trumped on the Economy? As president, he is under constant pressure on the same score: Orthodox or - Left? Probably he has only nominal preference for the Left, but two of his three backers, Cosatu and the SACP (who like to flex their street muscle), have a very distinct preference. Daily they lock into the vicious infighting for their yearned for Left-leaning state.

In the early 1990s, with the exiles barely settled in, there were two front-runners mainly for the presidency (before Nelson Mandela's 1994-1999 tenancy): Mbeki, and the charismatic Chris Hani, leader of the SA Communist Party.

With Hani's assassination in 1993 by two white right-wingers (who are still seeking presidential pardons), the path was cleared for Mbeki.

Otherwise who knows who might have won the presidency? Today, the populism encouraged by the Zuma camp easily could spill over into a swing to the Left.

As Deputy (later full) President, Mbeki inherited the Tripartite Alliance, but he had little patience for the ever-vocal Cosatu, and even less for the SACP (whose candidates piggy-backed into the 400-member National Assembly as ANC candidates, but owing their first loyalty to the SACP).

The more Mbeki pushed Cosatu and the SACP to the fringes, the more he helped to create both the modern Left - and President Zuma. If in his present retirement, Mbeki has a Left demon, it is of his own creation.

In the mid-1990s, a curious coincidence occurred which helps to explain why the Tripartite Alliance presently is tearing itself apart. Zuma, although chosen by Mbeki as his deputy president, fell out with him; but then through a sequence of circumstances he became the standard bearer of the anti-Mbekites. Now hell hath no fury like the comrades scorned.

At the legendary Polokwane conference in December 2007, when Mbeki was ousted as ANC president, Zuma swept in - 60% to 40%. The Left that took shape behind him was Cosatu (a 2 million member trade union federation whose main weapon is the strike); the SACP, delivering the "cerebral" input, claiming the "vanguard" position among the parties, and quite likely to serve as Cosatu's proxy political party); and the muscle-bound ANC Youth League (ANCYL).

Their collective strength was their numbers and mutual dislike of the "aloof and arrogant" Mbeki. If they have a common ideology, it is the vague one of "pro-poor" and "anti-poverty." But this is not what binds or separates them now - it's power and greed.

One way of understanding the power struggle is to position Zuma as the central ANC pillar, which indeed is his structural (if theoretical) position. Flanking him (or outflanking him) are Cosatu, SACP and the ANCYL (sort of flying buttresses), which explains why he has no power base in the struggle arena, and why since his legal troubles began in 2005 his "backers" so often have treated him with contempt.

To Cosatu and the SACP, Zuma has been a convenient (if essential) standard bearer in their struggle with Mbeki. Cosatu's secretary general once dismissed him as "no messiah", but Cosatu/SACP disrespect for Zuma is evident even more stridently when they invade his presidential territory and bark out their criticisms and demands.

ANCYL president Julius Malema (a media "buffoon") is the crudest. When Zuma appointed his first 32-member cabinet earlier this year, Malema raised a storm over the choices. The "minorities" (whites, coloureds, Indians), he raged, had no entitlement to such senior positions. While agreeing that all blacks (Africans, coloureds, Indians) were equal, he made it plain that Africans were more equal than the rest.

The next time such appointments were made, he warned, the top positions would have to be allocated to Africans. His authority for making this demand derived solely from his ability to hustle for Zuma. With the "minorities" totalling only about 10 million of the 47 million population, this is ethnic cleansing with a vengeance. No "rainbow nation" here.

The Tripartite Alliance, which brought the ANC, Cosatu and SACP formally together in the mid-1980s, was a very different creature from the one presently self-destructing. Two blistering campaigns have been unleashed: one led by the ANCYL to eliminate the SACP from the Alliance, and the other led by the ANC to cut Cosatu down to size.

Eliminating the SACP in itself would pull a major prop from under Cosatu, which as a trade union federation cannot start a political party of its own (there is no way in which it can arrange for party political representation for 2 million affiliated members with differing views).

If the ANC assault succeeds, it will deliver Zuma into ANC/ANCYL hands. So from being a Cosatu/SACP captive, Zuma would become an ANC/ANCYL captive. Why he ever gave up peaceful cattle herding is a mystery.

More immediately, there is gossip that at an ANC National Council in September a motion of no confidence will be tabled against Zuma. This is just gossip. Premature removal of Zuma would wreck what structures and discipline still prevail in the ANC.

There is no possibility of a candidate emerging who is  acceptable to all sides in the presidential struggle and equipped to guide the warring factions through a reasonably disciplined changeover. (Constitutionally, Zuma's five-year term as president expires only in 2012).

In a way, it is Zuma who keeps the edifice intact.  If he is ejected, the edifice collapses - the plug is pulled - and when this happens the strikes, demos and general infighting will take on a new momentum.

So the harder the ANCYL and ANC press for the removal of Cosatu and the SACP, the more the ferment will bubble. Insiders say infighting extends deep not only into the structures of the ANC, ANCYL, Cosatu and the SACP, but also into government departments. Governance itself is imperilled.

There is no easy answer, therefore, to the dilemma in which black politics finds itself, because beyond the warring factions lies the biggest problem of all - the direction the economy should take (Ortho or Left?).

So far, with his acknowledged capacity for a soft-shoe shuffle in politics, Zuma has done a remarkable job of balancing the various contestants (earlier, he surmounted other hurdles: allegations of corruption, dismissal by Mbeki as national deputy president, further corruption allegations, a rape charge).

Zuma therefore presents a convincing front of indestructibility, but for how long can he keep it up? Perhaps the Queen should also have advised him to continue to keep his cool, but he is trying to do it anyway, even as the loud-mouth Malema shouts him down.

The mistake Zuma made was to anoint Malema as a "worthy" future leader. Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille describes what this anointment means (even if Malema just controls Zuma from a mob base): Malema "is emerging as the personification of the ANC's threat to the Constitution. He articulates their racial nationalism; he uses hate speech to provoke racial conflict... He is the ANC Today".

In my article above, the term ANC has been used loosely, as it is throughout the South African media.  But the real question is - who and what exactly is the ANC, and where does its authority run? The answer to this question would make it much clearer who the winners are likely to be in the spreading factional war - and what kind of future awaits South Africa.

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