Johannesburg — ON APRIL 6, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) dropped the 16 corruption charges against African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma -- opening the door for him to ascend to state power following the ruling party's convincing election victory.

Zuma's inauguration a month later as SA's first citizen, after a marathon eight-year battle with state prosecutors, ushered in SA's most dramatic moment in 2009.

But if Zuma's climb to the top was the climax in this year's political calendar, the anticlimax must be the failure of the Congress of the People (COPE) to capitalise on the party's earlier promise during elections, in which it managed to win a million votes.

It was billed after its formation as the only possible credible opposition to the ANC. Soon after, COPE's leadership squabbles, internal wrangling over who leads the party and lack of party infrastructure in communities se t off alarm bells, signalling the party's inability to move beyond the heady days of serving divorce papers on the ANC last year.

Centre for Policy Studies senior political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi puts it plainly: "COPE's subsequent difficulties should not come as a surprise. By the time of elections, COPE was already in decline and if they were held any later, it would have performed much worse."

While the ANC has traditionally enjoyed the gift of weak opposition, the formation of COPE and the media hype around it resulted in many opposition party figures being sold on the idea that COPE would make a credible dent in the ANC's armour at the polls.

Matshiqi argues that the smaller parties, many of which were decimated in the April elections, had "mortgaged" their strategy and tactics on COPE's ability to do battle with the ANC.

"They forgot to take stock of the state of opposition parties individually and collectively. For much of the year the opposition remained in a parlous state, with the exception of the Democratic Alliance (DA)."

But while the DA trumped COPE at the polls, holding on to its position as the official opposition, its trajectory for growth is going nowhere. Matshiqi says the DA's strength remains in the same places. "It commands the minority in general, whites in particular, meaning there is little future for growth," he says.

Moreover, any toenadering between opposition parties has proved fruitless thus far, making former DA leader Tony Leon's view that nothing divides the opposition more than talks of unity all the more true.

But it is not just the opposition that has failed to cohere; this year was also about the unravelling of the Zuma coalition that ousted Mbeki at the battle of Polokwane. While there is no danger of the tripartite alliance splitting any time soon, simmering tensions among the ANC and its leftist allies during the year point to fault lines around several issues. These include which component of the alliance constitutes the strategic centre, and the fight for "Zuma's soul ".

"All of this is a hangover from Polokwane. The tensions are part of a continuum of tensions that started peaking in June 2005. This year we saw the Zuma coalition unravelling, meaning that elements of the Zuma coalition are now on opposing sides," says Matshiqi.

He believes that the tensions are also in part about the left wanting to consolidate the policy and political gains it believed it made at the ANC's elective conference in 2007. This explains the public spats over who controls economic policy- making in the Cabinet, the National Planning Commission, and succession in the ruling party, all of which dominated the political landscape.

The dogfight between several alliance figures, including ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and leaders of the South African Communist Party, has tested Zuma's leadership ability sorely, leading many pundits to question whether he can hold the political centre. Factionalism in the alliance has now become almost institutionalised, meaning that the political reality is seen through the prism of factional interests of each component part of the tripartite alliance.

The ANC's provincial congress in the Eastern Cape, which saw the election of SACP treasurer Phumulo Masualle as ANC chairman, crystallised the battle lines between those who believed the ANC was under threat from leftists in the broad movement.

The alliance summit in November, aimed at resolving the pressing issues among the allies, has had little effect judging by the furious war of words that erupted between Malema and several senior SACP leaders who also serve on the ANC national executive committee .

Examining Zuma's scorecard in government points to a mixed bag. His ability to get key role players to enter into dialogue on how to respond to the economic crisis and SA's recession has been hailed by friend and foe.

Joint agreements to assist workers hit by job losses and companies in distress have resulted in landmark deals between business and labour. But even Zuma has had to acknowledge SA's response has not brought sufficient relief to the close to a million South Africans who have been retrenched, with a warning early this month that the worst is not yet over and that more job losses can well be expected.

Zuma's inclusive leadership style, not only on the economy but on the education, health and rural development challenges, have earned him kudos with civil society and other stakeholders. But his administration's take on crime and the overall handling of the criminal justice system have been rejected in several quarters, including by the opposition, which warns of Zuma's attack on the rule of law.

Matshiqi describes the responses to crime as a clash of two fundamentalisms. "What you have on the one hand is what I call the rule of law fundamentalists. They focus on narrow political goals in the so-called defence of the rule of law. On the other hand, there are those in the Zuma administration who have managed to capture the state. Because this group enjoys political favour, they often discount the negative implications of their political choices in the criminal justice chain," he says.

As this year draws to a close, the country's political leadership is going to have to step up to provide guidance under the watchful eyes of not only its people, but the world, as SA readies to host the Soccer World Cup. A daunting challenge indeed.