Tide turns, leaving Zuma stranded
HALF OF THE NEC NOW QUESTIONING DUBIOUS CABINET CHANGES Increasingly, our country is being ruled not from the Union Buildings, but from the Gupta family compound, says SACP.
President Jacob Zuma is coming under increased pressure from inside the ANC to justify Friday’s sweeping Cabinet changes that sent the rand tumbling and borrowing costs soaring. ANC treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize on Saturday joined Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and secretary-general Gwede Mantashe in questioning the manner in which the Cabinet changes were handled. The trio make up half of the party’s officials of the national executive committee. The SA Communist Party (SACP), which governs the country in an alliance with the ANC, has urged Zuma to quit, describing his actions as “recklessness”.
Mkhize said in an e-mailed statement: “The briefing by the president left a distinct impression that the ANC is no longer the centre, and thus depriving the leadership collective of its responsibly to advise politically on executive matters.”
Zuma’s decision to fire Pravin Gordhan has sparked South Africa’s biggest political crisis in almost a decade. While party veterans accuse Zuma of undermining the 105-year-old ANC, opposition parties are pushing for his ouster in parliament.
The rand was the world’s worst-performing currency last week, while bond yields jumped to their highest levels since January.
Repeated chants of “Zuma must go” echoed through Johannesburg City Hall, which was filled beyond capacity on Saturday for the memorial of Ahmed Kathrada. It is “very clear” what and who South Africa’s problems are, Gordhan said at the memorial.
Kathrada’s wife, Barbara Hogan, a former minister, called on Zuma to respect her husband’s wishes expressed in a letter to the president last year to resign, saying he would not be able to withstand the will of a “people united”.
Gordhan, 67, has been at loggerheads with Zuma, 74, for months over plans to build new nuclear plants and the management of state-owned companies.
The SACP said in an e-mailed statement on Friday: “Increasingly our country is being ruled not from the Union Buildings, but from the Gupta family compound.”
The party’s top six leaders weren’t consulted about most of the Cabinet changes, with a list of nominees being “thrown at us,” Mantashe said, adding that the list was “developed somewhere else and it’s given to us to legitimise it”.
Ramaphosa called Zuma’s reasons for removing Gordhan unacceptable. Mkhize also said the ANC’s leadership could not ignore that Zuma kept ministers “whose performance is rather unsatisfactory”.
An intelligence report that Zuma said showed Gordhan was trying to undermine his government was “unsubstantiated allegations”, Ramaphosa said, adding that the former finance minister “served our country with such distinction”.
Gordhan has said the report is a lie. – Bloomberg