Zuma’s exit ushers in new SAfrican president
JOHANNESBURG: South Africa prepared to welcome wealthy former businessman Cyril Ramaphosa as its new president on Thursday after scandal-tainted Jacob Zuma resigned under intense pressure from his own party.
Zuma announced he had stepped down in a late- night television address in which he took some digs at the African National Congress (ANC) party that had threatened to oust him via a
In a 30-minute speech, Zuma said he had “come to the decision to resign as president of the republic with immediate effect.”
“I have only asked my party to articulate my transgressions and the reason for its immediate he said.
Zuma, 75, had been in a divisive power struggle with Ramaphosa, the deputy president.
Ramaphosa, who won control of the ANC when he was elected as its head in December, was expected to be voted in by parliament as South Africa’s new president on Thursday, according to local media.
Zuma, in an earlier TV interview on Wednesday, said he had received “very unfair” treatment from the party that he joined in 1959 and in which he had fought for decades against apartheid white-minority rule.
He said he was angered over “the manner in which the decision is being implemented . . . I don’t agree, as there is no evidence of if I have done anything wrong.”
Forced out
The party’s national executive committee ordered Zuma’s recall
South African Deputy President and newly elected president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) Cyril Ramaphosa hour meeting at a hotel outside
Zuma did not resign, the party’s lawmakers in the Cape Town parliament would vote out him on Thursday.
But party deputy secretary general Jesse Duarte said after the resignation that “we are not celebrating.”
“We have had to recall a cadre of the movement that has served this organization for over 60 years, it’s not a small matter,” she added.
Zuma, who had no formal education, was jailed on Robben Island for ten years alongside Nelson Mandela under apartheid and rose through the ranks of the ANC to take power in 2009.