President Thabo Mbeki faced a humiliating rebuff before Monday’s vote for the leadership of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress. Delegates heckled him, booed his allies and then erupted in support of his rival, the party’s populist deputy leader, Jacob Zuma.

In Sunday’s opening session of the ANC’s five-yearly leadership conference, the country’s president made a last-ditch attempt to claw back support from Mr Zuma by detailing the steady economic advances of his decade at the party’s helm, and by referring obliquely to his rival’s scandal-tainted past.