The public spotlight shining on the national conference of the ANC Women's League, which started yesterday, will be looking for more subdued deliberations in choosing the organisation's new leader.

The public spotlight shining on the national conference of the ANC Women's League, which started yesterday, will be looking for more subdued deliberations in choosing the organisation's new leader.

Similar contestations among its sister organisations - the ANC and ANC Youth League - have been marked more by acrimony and hostile divisions than benign robustness characteristic of democratic processes.

So the quadruple leadership race within the ANCWL poses a stiff test for the character of an organisation that seems to recoil from challenges rather than to assert its independence.

Crafting its own distinct political voice within the ambit of the broader ANC-led alliance is the immediate challenge facing the leader to emerge from the fourfold race between Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Nomvula Mokonyane, Angie Motshekga and Thabile Dlamini.

But most important is that ANCWL delegates must heed the wisdom of disagreeing without being disagreeable when deliberating over such a potentially divisive issue as choosing a leader.