South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Saturday launched its campaign for an election that could see the party of the anti-apartheid struggle face a serious challenge from a breakaway group.
Jacob Zuma, the often controversial ANC leader, rallied tens of thousands of supporters in East London, in the south of the country, packed into a stadium that was a sea of yellow with people wearing the party’s T-shirt.
“Comrades, it is my honor and privilege to officially launch the 2009 ANC Election Manifesto!” Zuma told the crowd.
“The most important task of the beginning of the year is to ensure that the ANC returns a decisive election victory,” the 66-year-old leader said of the poll expected to be held in the first half of the year.
Standing in front of a banner declaring “Working together, we can do more,” Zuma outlined the priorities for the next five years: job creation, education, health, rural development, land reform and the fight against crime and corruption.
He also said South Africa would work to find solutions in the continent’s current hot spots: from Zimbabwe and Somalia to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The ANC, the party of liberation icon Nelson Mandela, has been in power for 15 years, since the end of the country’s white-minority apartheid rule.
The Democratic Alliance, the chief opposition movement in parliament, said Zuma’s speech was “long on promises, but short on credibility.”
“Every one of Jacob Zuma’s utterances is contradicted by the experience in reality,” said its leader Helen Zille. “If Zuma was serious about the fight against corruption, he would step down as the ANC presidential candidate until his name was cleared in court.”
Zuma, a convivial populist who has a charismatic hold on his legions of supporters, has survived constant brushes with controversy.
He was tried and cleared on a charge of rape and last year a court threw out corruption charges against him, with the judge suggesting that former president Thabo Mbeki had intervened in the legal process against his political rival.
The verdict was challenged by prosecutors and an appeal court judgment is expected today.
For the first time the ANC faces a serious challenge from the Congress of the People (COPE), set up last month by disillusioned former ANC activists.
Zuma is seen as the front-runner for the presidency after winning control of the ANC from Mbeki — who had earlier sacked him as deputy president — during the party’s conference in December 2007.
In September, Zuma’s allies forced Mbeki to resign as the country’s president just months before the end of his second term.
The in-fighting exposed deep splits within the party that led the struggle against apartheid and some analysts think COPE has a real chance of ending the ANC’s supremacy in the coming elections.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS