Zuma in battle to save his presidency
Leading ANC opponent warns of ‘mafia state’
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA• Jacob Zuma faces a battle to save his presidency as ruling party leaders prepare for a showdown this weekend over a controversy engulfing the government that one top official said is threatening to turn South Africa into a “mafia state.”
The meeting of the African National Congress’s decision- making National Executive Committee comes after revelations that the Guptas, who are Zuma’s family friends and business partners of his son, offered ministerial posts to ruling party officials. On Wednesday, Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said he rejected a proposal made personally by the Gupta brothers that he take over the finance ministry position.
“We need to deal with this; it will degenerate into a mafia state if this goes on,” ANC Secretary- General Gwede Mantashe said Thursday by phone. “The fact we are talking about this so boldly now shows that things are going to change.”
The country’s worst political crisis since the NEC recalled Thabo Mbeki as president in 2008 comes at a time when the economy is threatened with recession and hovering close to a junk credit rating, and just months before municipal elections. A failure by the ANC to deal decisively with the scandal could erode support for the party, which has won more than 60 per cent of the vote since apartheid ended in 1994.
“This is a defining moment,” Barbara Hogan, a former minister of both health and public enterprises, said Thursday. “This cannot be swept under the carpet.” The NEC “has an historical mission like never before. It has to deal with this rot, it has to clear it out,” she said.
While some ANC members, including ex- treasurer Mathews Phosa and Ben Turok, the former head of the party’s ethics committee, want Zuma to go, his allies dominate the committee and he has shrugged off a succession of previous scandals.
“Zuma still has control of the majority of the members of the NEC and that’s what counts,” said Theo Venter, a political analyst at NorthWest University near Johannesburg. “He will survive the week, but with less power than he had.”
A series of scandals have shadowed Zuma’s political career. The former head of the ANC’s intelligence wing, he took office in May 2009 just weeks after prosecutors dismissed graft charges against him. Since then, he’s been accused of squandering taxpayers’ money on a 215-million rand (US$18.5million) upgrade of his private home and allowing the Guptas to use an air force base to transport guests to a wedding. He denies any wrongdoing.
Dissent over his stewardship of Africa’s most industrialized economy intensified in December when his decision to name a little- known lawmaker as his finance minister in place of the respected Nhlanhla Nene sent the rand and stock and bond markets into a tailspin.
Four days later, Zuma reappointed Pravin Gordhan to the post that he’d held from 2009 to 2014, after coming under pressure from the ANC and business leaders.
“Zuma has been hammered by a lot of body blows, but no knockout punch has been delivered yet,” Daniel Silke, director of Cape Townbased Political Futures Consultancy, said.