The top leadership of South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) are to discuss removing South African President Jacob Zuma from his post at a meeting this weekend, said two senior party officials who will be in attendance, with the country in the grips of its biggest political crisis in a decade.
The ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) is due to discuss a motion of no confidence in Zuma that has been filed by opposition parties in parliament.
Some members of the panel are also to raise the possibility of removing Zuma as the nation’s president at the meeting from tomorrow through Sunday, according to the party officials, who sit on the decisionmaking body and asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
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While the committee rejected the possibility of ousting Zuma at a meeting in November last year, opposition to his rule has mounted within the party’s ranks following his March 31 decision to fire Pravin Gordhan as South African minister of finance, a move that prompted Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings Ltd to downgrade the nation’s sovereign credit rating to “junk.”
Divisions in the party have widened since the ANC suffered its worst-ever electoral result when it lost control of Johannesburg, the economic hub, Pretoria, the capital, in a municipal vote in August last year.
Three of its top six officials criticized Zuma’s decision to fire Gordhan, while South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is a rival to Zuma’s ex-wife to succeed him as party leader in December, said on Sunday that South Africa is threatened with becoming a “mafia state.”
The ANC will want to avoid a situation in which its lawmakers back the opposition motion to force Zuma to resign, said Anthony Butler, a political science professor at the University of Cape Town.
“The decision to remove Zuma as president of the country would be taken by the NEC and then communicated to the parliamentary caucus,” he said. “A vote of no confidence would be, in the ANC’s logic, a dangerous thing, as it could create serious intra-party conflict and an inability to regroup.”
ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa said that while the agenda will only be set at the meeting, the committee would not discuss Zuma’s removal.
The South African Constitutional Court is considering whether to agree to an opposition party call for a secret ballot on the no-confidence motion in Zuma.
The chances of Zuma being recalled remain low, Peter Attard Montalto, a London-based economist at Nomura International, said by e-mail.
“We expect actually the NEC meeting this weekend to send a formal instruction to the National Assembly caucus to not vote for the no-confidence motion regardless of the secret ballot case outcome,” Montalto said.
Zuma is due to step down as ANC leader in December and as president in 2019.
His term has been marred by a succession of scandals, including a finding by the nation’s top court that he violated his oath of office by refusing to repay taxpayer money spent on his private home.
Labor unions and the South African Communist Party, which form part of the country’s ruling coalition, have called for his replacement.
A group of 101 ANC stalwarts and anti-apartheid activists want the committee to hold a consultative conference to discuss calls for Zuma to step down, Johannesburg-based newspaper Business Day reported yesterday, citing party veteran Frank Chikane.
Should they fail to get the committee’s backing to hold a consultative congress that runs separately from a policy meeting scheduled for next month, the stalwarts will hold their own gathering and invite civil society groups, the newspaper said.
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