This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, September 25th, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Taubon Becky, long without the support of his own political party, is no longer the president of South Africa.

What does that mean for stability in the region and Mabeki's role as a mediator on behalf of

power sharing in Zimbabwe?

Marion Tupi, policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Global

Liberty and Prosperity, comments.

At a meeting last week, the National Executive Council of the African National Congress asked President Becky to resign.

Becky was by this stage the President of the Republic of South Africa but not the president of the ANC.

He was the president of ANC until last year but he lost that position to the current leader of the ANC who is Jacob Zuma.

So in a sense, this meeting of the ANC last year,

this summit, created two centers of power in South Africa.

On the one hand, there was the leadership of the ANC around Jacob Zuma and his accolades.

And on the other hand, there was the leadership of the country around

Tabon Becky and of course this couldn't work out for a very long time and it all came to a crushing end last week when the ANC asked

Becky to step down and Becky couldn't say no because he didn't have the support in Parliament which is completely dominated by the ANC.

What does this do to Becky's role as sort of a tradesman when it comes to mediating these issues with Zimbabwe?

Well, he remains what is called a Southern African Development Community

mediator or facilitator for Zimbabwe which is to say that a lot of

African countries got together and said Tabon Becky you are going to be our

point man on Zimbabwe and he still remains Africa's mediator on Zimbabwe but really he has no

power anymore and this has some very interesting implications.

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