South Africa's Ruling ANC Party Decides To Remove Zuma As President
15 February 2018Various Agencies
The ANC has decided to sack Jacob Zuma as President of South Africa, a senior
official said Tuesday, after a marathon meeting to determine the fate of a
leader whose scandal-plagued years in power darkened and divided Nelson
Mandela's 'Rainbow Nation.'
The decision by the ruling party's national executive came in the early hours
of the morning, after 13 hours of tense deliberations and one face-to-face
meeting between Zuma and his presumed successor, deputy president Cyril
Ramaphosa.
Zuma has been living on borrowed time since Ramaphosa, a union leader once
tipped as Mandela's pick to take over the reins, was elected as head of the
106-year-old ANC in December, narrowly defeating Zuma's ex-wife, Nkosazana
Dlamini-Zuma.
Despite the damning decision to order Zuma's 'recall' - ANC-speak for 'remove
from office' - domestic media have speculated that the 75-year-old might yet
defy the party's wishes, forcing it into the indignity of having to unseat him
in parliament.
Shortly before midnight, the SABC state broadcaster said Zuma had been told in
person by Ramaphosa that he had 48 hours to resign. A senior party source
later told Reuters Zuma had made clear that he was going nowhere.
'Cyril went to speak with him,' the source said, adding that when Ramaphosa
returned to the ANC meeting in a Pretoria hotel, the discussions were 'tense
and difficult'.
'We decided to recall Zuma. He hasn't been told yet,' the source said.
The ANC said it would hold a media briefing at 1000 GMT to reveal the results
of the meeting.
Zuma's spokesman did not answer his mobile phone.
On Friday his wife Tobeka Madiba-Zuma posted comments on Instagram suggesting
Zuma, who has challenged and defied attempts by the ANC and courts to rein him
in, was prepared to fight and believed he was the victim of a Western
conspiracy.
'He will finish what he started because he does not take orders beyond the
Atlantic Ocean,' she said.
South Africa's economy, the most sophisticated on the continent, has stagnated
under Zuma's nine-year tenure, with banks and mining firms reluctant to invest
because of policy uncertainty and rampant corruption.
Ramaphosa elected new leader of South Africa's ruling party
South Africa's ruling African National Congress was elected Cyril Ramaphosa as
its new president December 2017, making the nation's deputy president likely
to become the next leader of the country.
Outgoing President Jacob Zuma's second and final term as party leader has
ended after a scandal-ridden tenure that has seen a plummet in the popularity
of Nelson Mandela's liberation movement.
Despite being part of Zuma's administration, the 65-year-old Ramaphosa has
styled himself in recent months as a reformer who will steer South Africa away
from the corruption scandals that have hurt the economy and briefly sent it
into recession this year.
One of the South Africa's richest businessmen, Ramaphosa is a veteran of the
struggle to end the country's former apartheid system of white minority rule
and helped negotiate the transition to democracy.
He turned his connections as a former union leader into business ventures that
at times have proven controversial. Many South Africans remember that
Ramaphosa was a board member of the Lonmin mining group at the time of the
Marikana killings in 2012, when police shot dead 34 striking mine workers.
Zuma's term as South Africa's head of state ends in 2019. It is not clear if
Ramaphosa as the ANC's new leader will call on Zuma to resign as the country's
president, which the party has the authority to do
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