By Michael Georgy
President Thabo Mbeki is seen as a consummate political tactician inside his ruling ANC but has been accused of stifling dissent as his government struggles with an Aids epidemic, widespread poverty and crime.
The ANC will hold a conference next month that is expected to determine its next leader.
Mbeki is constitutionally barred from running for president again when his current stint ends in 2009 but he can still stay on as leader of the ANC, a position that could allow him to choose a successor and hold wide sway over the party.
First elected in 1999 to succeed Nelson Mandela as South Africa's second black president, Mbeki has presided over an economic boom.
A long-time member of the ANC and son of a senior party leader, Mbeki joined the ANC Youth League at 14 and became active in student politics.
"I was born into the struggle," he says.
Mbeki, who was born in June 1942, left South Africa to pursue a masters degree in economics in England and military training in the Soviet Union. A key backer of the ANC's armed campaign against apartheid, he also spent years lobbying against apartheid across the world.
Mbeki is seen as a shrewd and tough strategist in the ANC who is more comfortable in small groups than in front of crowds.
He has been mediating in African hotspots Zimbabwe such as, but has come under relentless fire at home. Critics say he has undermined South Africa's democratic credentials by using state institutions to purge opponents, something he denies.
Mbeki has infuriated AIDS activists by questioning accepted Aids science while the disease kills about 1 000 people a day.
His pro-business policies are credited with yielding one of the most prosperous eras in South Africa's history.
But millions of impoverished South Africans still live in townships, glaring reminders of the white minority rule he fought against in exile.