Call referendum to decide Jacob Zuma’s fate

ARTICLE 83 of South Africa’s constitution imposes two fundamental obligations on its president, on the basis of being the head of the state and government, namely:

To uphold, defend and respect the constitution as the supreme law;

To promote the unity of the nation and to promote that which will advance the country.

The president has failed on both obligations, as demonstrated by the public protector Constitutional Court decision on Nkandla and the disunity of the nation, as well as within the ANC itself around the call for his removal.

The irrational and unfair removal of performing cabinet ministers and the unconscionable retention of under-performing ones, leading to an adverse economic finding by rating agencies, does not advance the interests of the country.

Alarmingly, the president has ignored the calls to go from members of his own party, from the ANC’s integrity committee, which looks after the image of the party, and from the two alliance partners of the ANC, the SACP and Cosatu, the acceptance of whose advice is a decades-long tradition.

Instead of attending and responding to the substance and essence of the grievances, he has fatuously dismissed them and variously ascribed the calls to minority groups, white monopoly capital and faceless foreign forces.

However, in a recent church gathering, the president unwittingly declared his willingness to go if the ANC or the masses said so. The ANC is divided on this issue, so it cannot be relied upon.

But the “masses” can be tested and have a decisive say once and for all by means of a referendum to answer by a simple yes or no as to whether the president should step down.

Article 84 of the constitution empowers the president to call for a national referendum.

The undesirability of calling for a referendum around one person and around an issue that one political party (ANC) could easily resolve, as it previously did when recalling President Thabo Mbeki, is far outweighed by the undesirability of a reasonably foreseeable economic meltdown and national disunity in the last two years of the president’s term.

Our embattled country cannot afford either one.

Alternatively, should the president predictably decline to call a referendum, then people’s referenda in cities and towns should be held hosted by universally acceptable South African NGOs or faith-based associations to express the will of the masses one way or the other.

The result may persuade the ANC to act or justify its anxiety.

Mpumelelo “Bond” Nyoka, Port Elizabeth