A breakaway faction of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) formed a new party on Saturday to contest elections next year, a move that could dramatically reshape the country’s post-apartheid political landscape.
The rebellion by members loyal to former South African president Thabo Mbeki, ousted by the ANC in September, has thrown the traditionally united party into disarray and stoked fears of rising instability in Africa’s richest economy.
Some 4,000 delegates attended the splinter faction’s first national meeting in a show of strength for the first real challenge to the ANC since South Africa’s multiracial elections in 1994.
PHOTO: EPA
An increasing number of South Africans facing massive unemployment and poverty feel the leaders of the ANC are tainted by corruption and do not have their interests at heart.
The new party will be launched in South Africa’s Free State province on Dec. 16, Mbhazima Shilowa, a Mbeki ally and former provincial premier, told several thousand delegates at a convention in Johannesburg.
A name for the party has not yet been chosen.
“I stand here today on behalf of the preparatory committee to say not only do we intend to tackle it [the ANC], we intend to win the next election,” Shilowa, who resigned from the ANC last month, said to loud cheers from the crowd.
Mbeki was defeated by Jacob Zuma in a bitter contest for the ANC leadership last year and then ousted by the party nine months later. Zuma is the front-runner to take the presidency in next year’s election.
Mbeki has declined to support the breakaway party, but has also said he does not want to be part of the ANC election campaign.
Earlier, former defense minister Mosiuoa Lekota, another prominent ANC defector, said the ANC appeared set on interfering in state institutions and enriching its leaders as white minority governments had done during apartheid.
“The threat the nation faces is that we will see the reaffirmation of important elements of that terrible legacy under our new masters,” he told the delegates. “We are ready and we will stand up and fight.”
Lekota, seen as one of Mbeki’s most faithful ministers, resigned from the Cabinet five weeks ago in sympathy with his former boss. He and other defectors have been organizing the framework of a new political party since then.
The possibility that the pro-business Mbeki wing of the ANC could bolt and join the new party comes amid investor concerns over growing trade union and communist influence in the ANC-led coalition, which has been in power since 1994.
Many analysts say the ANC still commands deep loyalty, even from Mbeki supporters, and that a break-up is unlikely despite some discontent with Zuma’s leadership in the business community and black middle class.
Zuma has said he would not tilt government to the left or discard pro-business policies credited for nearly a decade of economic growth.
The ANC leader has dismissed Lekota, who resigned from the party this week, and the other defectors as irrelevant.
“We wish the adventurists luck and are pleased that many are coming out and are resigning from the ANC. We expect the convention to unmask many others who will hopefully also leave the ANC in peace,” Zuma said on Friday.
The ANC is determined to prevent a trickle of defections swelling in the months leading up to a general election, which is expected around April. ANC activists have clashed with Lekota’s supporters at public meetings in recent weeks.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS