African Union leaders bade farewell to Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma by giving her rousing endorsements for her battle back home. In her farewell speech, she also hinted that she wanted to continue her work on the continent, saying she would “remain a soldier for the African cause”.

Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo extensively praised the work she did for women and on gender, and said she could become the second elected female president on the continent should South Africans vote for her. Incoming AU chairperson, President Alpha Conde from Guinea, also seconded the motion saying she could become president after her return.

The ANC Women’s League is pushing ahead with its campaign to have a woman candidate replace President Jacob Zuma as ANC president in 2017 and that of the country in 2019. “The time has come for women leadership to be acknowledged. We are not asking. We are saying the time is ripe,” said Nkoana-Mashabane.

Dlamini-Zuma lauded outgoing Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as the first elected woman president on the continent, and also as the chair of the Economic Community of West African States. ECOWAS intervened timely following a post-election crisis in The Gambia, forcing Yayah Jammeh to step down from the presidency after he lost the elections.

“Right now there is just one, in Liberia [Ellen Johnson Sirleaf] and her two terms come to an end in October,” said Dlamini-Zuma on Sunday. She was speaking at a church in Khutsong, Carletonville at a service with the theme of women in leadership.

Although she giggled many times when speaking about the potential of a female president in South Africa, she called on women to stop undermining their own capabilities. She has been earmarked by some people to replace President Jacob Zuma when he steps down at the ANC’s 54th national elective conference in December but is likely to have to fight it out with Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who declared his ambitions in December 2016 regarding the post.

She said it cannot be defined as a democracy if the majority were not participants in the democratic process. “If you empower women, you empower the entire family, you empower the entire community”, said Dlamini-Zuma.

Dlamini-Zuma has spent more two decades in South Africa’s politics, she is no doubt a seasoned politician. She served in Nelson Mandela’s 1994 cabinet as health minister then as foreign affairs and home affairs minister in Thabo Mbeki’s cabinet.

The argument over who takes over as President in 2019 is also tied to the history which Dlamini-Zuma shares with the present president, Jacob Zuma. They were married for 26 years, until 1998, and their union was blessed with four children. Although the former African Union Commission chair is intelligent, assertive, controlling, but she has also been infamously tagged as “uncommunicative” and “not-people-friendly”. There are concerns that Dlamini-Zuma’s candidacy promises more of the same ANC and government culture that has beleaguered the party in recent times.

Also, Dlamini-Zuma’s endorsement by her ex-husband just reconfirmed that he hopes to entrust his future to the woman who will sustain the Zuma legacy. Zuma faced 700 charges of corruption and racketeering in 2009 but he argued that they were politically motivated. The drive for Dlamini-Zuma to become president is part of a strategy to keep the charges dead, long after he has left the seat of power, some believe. The argument for this is that as his ex-wife, she would not let the charges stand against Zuma, while Ramaphosa would.

“If you asked me two months ago, I would have said Cyril Ramaphosa is going to be South Africa’s next president,” said Nic Borain, a political analyst who consults for BNP Paribas. “But Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma seems to be gaining ground. She has the support of all major ANC-allied bodies—including the ANC youth league, the ANC women’s league, a powerful trifecta of regional ANC leaders and of course, her ex-husband,” says Borain.

South Africa has a parliamentary system of government, so does not elect its president directly. This invariably means whoever wins the race to lead the ANC will be the next president and some South African analysts feel it’s high time a woman takes the lead. A woman president in 2019 will be historical and it will certainly change the country’s shallow international image but that does not guarantee that the country will be led out of its current dismal political state.