Harare/Johannesburg - South African President Thabo Mbeki was the man of the hour in Africa Friday after clinching a hard-won power-sharing deal between Zimbabwe's rivals of nearly a decade - President Robert Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Welcoming Thursday's agreement on the formation of a government of national unity, the details of which have yet to be released, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised Mbeki's "tireless efforts to help them (the Zimbabwean leaders) reach it."

Harare/Johannesburg - Arch rivals Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, inked an historic power-sharing deal Thursday, ending Mugabe's 28-year monopoly on power.

Details of the deal have yet to be released, but Mugabe had been slated to remain president with fewer powers while Tsvangirai becomes prime minister.

The deal caps five months of political turmoil in Zimbabwe since Mugabe's unprecedented defeat in the first-round presidential election.

Johannesburg/Harare  - After a decade-long political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe, Africa's "sinking Titanic" - as Zambia's deceased president Levy Mwanawasa once called his neighbouring country - was headed for shore Thursday as the 28-year stranglehold on power of President Robert Mugabe was finally prised loose.

Johannesburg  - Thousands of South Africans joined demonstrations in support of corruption-accused African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma on Wednesday, two days before a court is due to issue a key ruling on his case.

Thousands marched in the port city of Durban and the eastern city of Sasolburg to demand that the charges against former deputy president Zuma be dropped.

Luanda/Johannesburg  - European and African election observers gave a generally clean bill of health to last weekend's general elections in Angola - the first in 16 years, in which President Eduardo dos Santos' party was poised for a landslide win.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the elections, which the European Union's 108-member observer team described in a preliminary report as "tranquil and peaceful," showed Angola was consolidating its democracy.

Johannesburg/Luanda - With nearly 55 per cent of the ballots counted, Angola's ruling MPLA party seem headed for a massive victory of more than 80 per cent of the vote in the country's first parliamentary elections in 16 years, reports said Sunday.

According to the state electoral commission, the MPLA party of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was ahead in 17 of 18 provinces. Should the results be confirmed, the MPLA would have more than the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution.

The official results are expected at the earliest by the middle of next week.

The largest opposition party UNITA had so far received little more than 10 per cent of the vote. The rest went to smaller parties.