ANC can no longer dodge its duty on Zuma

Although President Jacob Zuma’s name was not on the ballot paper, the outcome of the ANC presidential election can justifiably be seen as a vote of no confidence in him. Zuma had not made it a secret that he wanted former AU Commission head and ANC veteran Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as his successor. He openly campaigned for her, especially in KwaZuluNatal, where the party faithful initially seemed to be vacillating between backing the president’s ex-wife or his one-time best friend, Zweli Mkhize. He also used his office to try to swing the mood in her favour. On the morning of the first day of the conference, he took everybody by surprise when he announced that access to higher education would be free to students from poor and working-class families from the beginning of next year. The timing of this populist announcement — populist because it was not supported by any plan of how it was to be financed — clearly showed that Zuma was looking to influence the way delegates were going to vote.

His plan failed and Cyril Ramaphosa is now the new ANC president.

We can only speculate as to who would have won the race had Dlamini-Zuma run for ANC office without the Zuma baggage. She is clearly highly respected and loved in ANC structures. But her association with Zuma and a gallery of rogue ministers and ANC leaders with close ties to the Guptas contributed to her failure to be chosen by the majority of delegates — who are desperate to clean up the party’s image ahead of the 2019 elections.

That most ANC delegates rejected Zuma, through their rejection of his preferred candidate, should not really be a surprise as he has been unpopular with the rest of society for a long time. Party members are waking up to the fact that their continued association with him could only lead to tears in 2019. It cost them Nelson

Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg in the 2016 local government elections.

Despite Zuma’s disastrous performance as ANC president and head of state, his party has resisted internal and public calls for him to be axed. It has argued that removing him risked splitting the party as he enjoyed support among its members. As court judgments against him piled up and more scandalous revelations emerged implicating Zuma in state capture and other acts of betrayal, Luthuli House refused to recall him from the Union Buildings.

It may have been easy to remove Thabo Mbeki as the country’s president in 2008 because he was no longer in charge of the ANC, but Zuma was president of both, the party argued. Well, now he is no longer in charge at the ANC. The ball is in Luthuli House’s court.

If the party could remove Mbeki on the shaky grounds of a high court ruling that was later overturned by a higher court, surely there is no reason to keep Zuma in office.

If Ramaphosa and his new team are to convince the public that this week marked a break with the past decade of rising corruption, broken state institutions and an ANC that has been rendered impotent by Zuma and the Guptas, their first order of business in the new year must be to tell the president to gracefully announce his resignation and go back to Nkandla where he can await his long overdue day in court in relation to his 786 counts of corruption.

Failure to remove him immediately is in nobody’s interest but his and those of the Guptas. Just two days after ANC conference insisted that a commission of inquiry be set up to investigate state capture as per the remedial action of former public protector Thuli Madonsela, Zuma defiantly filed yet more court papers in appeal — further delaying the appointment of the commission.

Can Ramaphosa and the ANC afford to keep in office such a recalcitrant deployee? Surely not.

Can Ramaphosa and the ANC afford such a recalcitrant deployee?