SOUTH African president-elect Jacob Zuma was under pressure last night to sack one of his former wives who has served as the country's Foreign Minister for the past 10 years.
The delicate matter of how to remove 60-year-old Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma from her prestigious post was believed to be under discussion as Mr Zuma set about extensively rebuilding the cabinet bequeathed to him by his predecessor.
Mr Zuma and the Foreign Minister divorced several years ago and their relations are said to be "frosty". Mr Zuma has several wives and faces a quandary over which one will now become the country's first lady.
Ms Dlamini-Zuma was appointed Foreign Minister by long-serving former president Thabo Mbeki, who is now seen as Mr Zuma's enemy. She was suggested as a possible replacement for Mr Zuma when he was fired as deputy president by Mr Mbeki over corruption and racketeering allegations in 2005.
Ms Dlamini-Zuma has been accused of embarrassing South Africa by backing governments with dubious human rights records, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Reports at the weekend said she should be the first cabinet minister to be replaced by Mr Zuma, claiming she had "brought nothing but shame and dishonour" to the country.
The pressure on Mr Zuma to fire her came as the president-elect appeared before the nation's political elite and foreign diplomats in the capital, Pretoria, after the announcement of final results in the general election.
Gone was the singing-and-dancing routine that is his political stock in trade. Instead, in formally accepting the African National Congress's crushing election win, the former goatherd and "houseboy" quietly read an acceptance speech in which he set out his priorities for government.
"The new president of the republic will be a president for all, and he will work to unite the country around a program of action that will see an improvement in the delivery of services," Mr Zuma said.
"He will strive to turn the climate of the country into a positive and relaxed one that makes people free to be creative and work hard to improve their lives and the economy of the country."
Addressing foreign diplomats, Mr Zuma pledged South Africa would continue to play a key role in international affairs and singled out neighbouring Zimbabwe to applaud the progress made in power-sharing.
Mr Zuma failed by the narrowest of margins to get a two-thirds majority. But it was still a crushing victory, with the ANC getting 65.96 per cent of the vote. The nearest opposition party, the white-led Democratic Alliance, was on 16.68 per cent.
At the last election five years ago, the ANC got 69.69 per cent, and most analysts believe Mr Zuma did astonishingly well given last year's major split in the ranks of the ANC that saw the ousting of Mr Mbeki. Mr Zuma's victory also stacks up well against the 1994 election, the first after the overthrow of apartheid, when Nelson Mandela achieved a vote of just over 60 per cent.
The failure to achieve the two-thirds majority means the new government will not have the power to change the constitution unilaterally. Mr Zuma again insisted last night it was never its intention to do so, anyway. But most analysts agree that with the sort of majority it has - 264 seats in a national parliament of 400 - the party can virtually do what it likes.
As well as winning big nationally, the ANC captured overwhelming control of eight of the nine provincial parliaments, only the local government in Cape Town falling to the DA.
The party that split from the ANC last year, the Congress of the People, made up mainly of Mbeki loyalists who departed when Mr Zuma became leader, ended up with 7.42 per cent and 30 seats in the parliament.
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