When Jacob Zuma knew his time was up
Late on the evening of February 4, Cyril Ramaphosa and the five other top leaders of South Africa’s ruling party went to President Jacob Zuma’s Cape Dutch colonial-style residence in the capital, Pretoria. They shared a dinner of chicken, rice, oxtail and salad.
The message was less pleasant: It was time for the 75-year-old leader to go. Zuma, in power since 2009, dug in his heels.
“President Zuma basically said to us: ‘I’m not going anywhere, I’m not convinced by you guys, I’m not going to resign,”’ Paul Mashatile, the African National Congress’ treasurer-general, told mining executives in Cape Town on Feb. 6. “We tried to persuade him, we spent a lot of time. At the end we said that’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. Zuma’s immersion in a succession of scandals had caused immeasurable damage to the ANC, once revered for the leading role it played in vanquishing apartheid, and had ground Africa’s most industrialized economy to a nearstandstill. With elections looming in 2019, the officials, who’d been chosen seven weeks earlier to lead the party, were adamant that he wasn’t going to finish his second term.
Now Zuma is gone, announcing his resignation Wednesday, and Ramaphosa was elected Thursday to replace him as president. The meeting at the presidential residence, it turned out, was a minor skirmish in a war whose victor had been decided in December.
This is the story of Zuma’s downfall, and how his own No. 2 made it happen.
It began on Dec. 16, when more than 4,000 delegates descended on the Nasrec conference center in Soweto near Johannesburg for the ANC’s national conference. Zuma’s term as party leader was up and a new chief had to be chosen. With prosecutors circling to indict him on graft charges related to an arms deal in the 1990s, Zuma needed to ensure he had his successor’s protection.
Party tradition dictated that the top job should go to Ramaphosa, 65, its deputy leader. He’d won international acclaim when he steered talks that ended apartheid and produced South Africa’s first democratic constitution, and had served as the country’s deputy president since 2014.
Instead, Zuma backed Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, his ex-wife and the mother of four of his more than 20 children. His confident demeanor in the lead-up to the gathering indicated that he thought she had the contest in the bag.
What Zuma hadn’t counted on was three court rulings that disqualified about 100 of his allies from voting. Or on a decision by David Mabuza, a key power broker in the eastern Mpumalanga province, to switch allegiances shortly before the election. When Ramaphosa was declared the winner of the ANC presidency on Dec. 18 with 52 percent of the vote, Zuma sat stony-faced, pursed his lips and didn’t applaud.
On Jan. 30, the ANC’s top leaders tried to meet with Zuma on his return from Ethiopia. He kept them waiting for five days. Then two days before the scheduled state-of-the-nation speech, parliamentary Speaker Baleka Mbete dropped the bombshell that the speech would be postponed — due to fears of violent disruption, she said. The ANC then announced plans to convene an NEC meeting on Feb. 7 to discuss the transition of power, only to cancel it hours later after Ramaphosa had further discussions with Zuma. Ramaphosa issued a statement the next day saying the meeting had been constructive and the impasse would be resolved soon. The seeming detente lasted until Feb. 10, when the ANC’s top six leaders held more late-night talks with Zuma. He again snubbed appeals to go graciously. The next day, Ramaphosa told a rally that the transition to a new administration would be finalized once and for all when the NEC met on Feb. 12.
That gathering, held once again at the Saint George hotel, lasted for 13 hours. The panel’s members agreed that Zuma’s time was up and Ramaphosa should replace him. Ramaphosa and Magashule left the gathering for an hour to meet with Zuma at his residence to inform him of the decision.
Zuma was awake when they arrived shortly after at 11 p.m and there were “very cordial” discussions, Magashule later told reporters. Zuma said that he didn’t want to go yet. The request was denied and Zuma was given “time and space” to reflect.
On Feb. 14, the ANC’s parliamentary caucus said it would pass a motion of no-confidence in the president the next day unless he quit. Zuma retorted: “I felt I am being victimised here,” he said. “That is not the way we do things. You can’t force the decision as it has been done now. Nobody has ever provided me with reasons. What is the problem?”
But faced with the inevitability that Parliament would vote him out if he didn’t go voluntarily, Zuma announced his resignation in a televised address later that night. “The ANC should never be divided in my name,” Zuma said. “Make no mistake, no leader should stay beyond the time determined by the people they serve.” —