SACP to mobilise for Zuma’s removal
PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma is not going to have a free pass to the end of his tenure at the Union Buildings in 2019.
This was a warning yesterday from ANC stalwarts and tripartite alliance partners in the wake of his survival of a second motion of no confidence at the recent ANC national executive committee (NEC) meeting.
The SA Communist Party said it would mobilise for Zuma’s removal in the same way it did to dismantle apartheid.
SACP spokesperson Alex Mashilo told The Star that the party’s central committee meeting, which starts tomorrow would also discuss what needed to be done to stop the “cancerous rot that is eating away our movement”.
The meeting, ending on Sunday in Joburg, would also prepare for the 14th national congress to be held in Tshwane from July 10 to July 15.
Mashilo said the SACP was already driving public mobilisation campaigns against challenges dogging the ruling alliance.
“We were the first organisation to call for a judicial commission of inquiry into state capture. But it must be noted that we are not part of the anti-Zuma brigade.
“We are even not anti-Zuma. We are against state capture, corruption, maladministration and degeneration of our movement… happening under the leadership of President Zuma. Action must be taken, right at the head, to bring these social ills to an end.”
He said they would also mobilise society against Zuma’s administration, “in the same way we mobilised our people against the apartheid regime”.
ANC stalwart Fazel Randera told The Star that they would reach out to the ANC’s structures and its alliance partners, and various civil society organisations, mobilising against Zuma, in an effort for the president to resign.
“We will reach out to other organisations, alliance partners, ANC structures, to continue raising matters we have been raising,” he said.
The stalwarts wrote to the NEC imploring them to recall Zuma from his position.
Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said the labour federation’s central committee meeting, ending today in Irene, outside Pretoria, would pronounce on the way forward.
“Look, the central committee is discussing everything that will be happening going forward. There is a commission dealing with that matter (Zuma’s removal). At the end, it will be explained as to what should exactly happen going forward,” he said.
Cosatu recently took a decision to support Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to succeed Zuma when he steps down as ANC leader in December, and to bar Zuma from addressing its gatherings.
And in what was viewed as a move to avert embarrassment of officials supporting Zuma, the ANC deployed Ramaphosa to address the central committee meeting.
There were fears that failure to grant Cosatu affiliates their wish to be addressed by Ramaphosa could lead to whichever leader deployed by the ANC being booed in the same manner Zuma was on May Day in Bloemfontein.
But there appears to be little appetite to remove Zuma through the motion of no confidence tabled by opposition parties in Parliament.
On Tuesday, ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu reiterated that ANC MPs were expected to vote according to the party line, whether or not the vote is secret.
Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association chairperson Kebby Maphatsoe, a staunch Zuma supporter, has told The Star they would not allow calls for Zuma to step down. He said they were influenced by outside forces agitating for regime change in the country.
Action must be taken, right at the head