It was widely believed of South Africa's outgoing president, Thabo Mbeki, that the only time when he wasn't plotting was when he was asleep. More than his bizarre views on AIDS or even his failure to do much for South Africa's poor, it was that reputation as an inveterate plotter that finally brought him down.
Mbeki's humiliation has been very great. First the governing African National Congress (ANC) refused to re-elect him as its leader last year, which dashed his hopes of winning a third term in next year's election.
But Mbeki would still have remained president until early 2009 — until last month, when the ANC leadership, convinced that Mbeki was using the courts to pursue a private vendetta against his rival Jacob Zuma, ordered him to resign early.