Zuma’s survival will cost the ANC

No doubt Jacob Zuma is a survivor. He is now into his proverbial ninth life, having scraped through the eighth no-confidence vote that he has confronted since becoming SA’s president in 2009. On the face of it, the majority of ANC members who let the president off the hook, despite having their first opportunity to vote in secret, have let themselves and their country down. Zuma is a disgraced politician, whose dirty laundry has been washed in public again and again and whose behaviour has sullied the hard-won reputation of both country and party.

His presidency has been a slow-burning disaster. SA has become poorer, jobs have become scarcer, the rand has slumped and the country’s credit rating has been downgraded to junk. South Africans are more divided and frustrated than they have been at any time since the dawn of black majority rule in 1994. Their institutions have been weakened systematically by a presidency whose own credibility has been repeatedly compromised, most recently by allegations about corrupt relations between the Gupta family business, Zuma and members of government. When ANC members stood up to speak on Tuesday, few leapt to the defence of the embattled president. Instead, they defended the record of their party.

Yet the problem is not just the president, but the party too. With Zuma at the head, patronage networks have become central to the ANC’s raison d’être. Institutions have been placed at the service of private and party interests. Corruption has flourished. Indeed, Zuma has some reason to feel confident that he has rigged the system sufficiently in his favour to carry on in power.

Yet at least 30 of 249 ANC MPs defied the party line. This is a reminder that there are still principled members carrying the mantle for Africa’s oldest liberation movement and the moral high ground it once held. London, August 10.