SOUTH AFRICA: South Africa's Minister of Safety and Security, Mr Steve Tshwete, died unexpectedly at the weekend, only minutes before the eighth anniversary of the triumph of the African National Congress in the 1994 general election that marked the start of the emancipation of blacks from apartheid.
The death of Mr Tshwete (63), from pneumonia and kidney failure after being admitted to hospital with severe lower back pains, leaves President Thabo Mbeki with the problem of appointing a successor to replace him on the frontline of the fight against crime.
A former Robben Island prisoner and political commissar in the ANC's guerrilla army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, Mr Tshwete took over as Safety and Security Minister when Mr Mbeki succeeded Mr Nelson Mandela as president in June 1999.
Mr Tshwete, a tough-talking politician noted for his loyalty to Mr Mbeki, adopted a gung-ho approach to his role as political generalissimo in the war against crime, exhorting policemen to tear into criminals like bulldogs. Known in ANC circles as Mr Fix-it, Mr Tshwete was a Mbeki loyalist and a member of the ANC's decision-making National Executive Committee.
During apartheid rule, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Robben Island in 1964, for furthering the ANC's aims. Four years after his release in 1979, he played a major role in the formation of the domestic anti-apartheid umbrella organisation, the United Democratic Front, becoming one of its prominent spokesmen in the eastern Cape, before going into exile in Zambia in 1985.
Later, as sports minister in the post-apartheid system, he helped unify the country's racially divided sports bodies, before becoming safety and security minister.
His straight - or reckless - oratorical style got him into trouble on more than one occasion, most recently in April last year when he falsely accused three ANC notables - including the former ANC secretary-general, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa - of conspiring to oust Mr Mbeki.
The jury was still out on whether he was successful in halting the rising tide of crime at the time of his death.
His decision to impose a moratorium on the release of official police crime statistics, and to order a reappraisal on the manner on which the crime was recorded, collated and interpreted, led to suspicions that he was overseeing a process of sanitising the figures to create an aura of success around his ministry.
Two names figured prominently in a flurry of conjecture yesterday over his possible successor: Mr Charles Nqakula, national chairman of the South African Communist Party and Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, and (coincidentally) his wife, Ms Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, Chief Whip of the ANC in parliament, who led the South African parliamentary observer mission to Zimbabwe during last month's presidential election there.
Mr Mbeki paid tribute to Mr Tshwete and ordered flags at public building to be flown at half-mast to mark the passing of "an outstanding freedom fighter".
Speaking to South Africa's orbiting space tourist, Mr Mark Shuttleworth. via video-link, Mr Mbeki said "it has been a very, very shocking moment for everybody. Many, many people are very distraught. It happened so suddenly.".