Seventh time may be the charm
The motion may not have passed, but it shows the ANC doesn’t speak with one voice
President Jacob Zuma appeared to be a relieved man when he addressed ANC supporters in Cape Town after narrowly escaping a motion of no confidence against him on Tuesday. Despite the brave face he put on, and despite singing revolutionary songs outside Parliament, some 35 ANC MPs had in effect just shown him the middle finger by refusing to vote for him to remain as the country’s president.
Outside this week’s effort in Parliament, there have been two motions by his comrades within the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) for Zuma to resign. The party’s integrity committee, chaired by ANC stalwart and Rivonia triallist Andrew Mlangeni, recommended that he step down for bringing the 105-year-old liberation movement into disrepute.
Several other ANC veterans, as well as the South African Communist Party and trade union federation Cosatu, have all not only called for Zuma to step down but have also banned him from addressing their events.
Yet Zuma has so far ignored all calls from his own party for him to step down. He has chosen to cling to power even after internal ANC surveys blamed him for the decline in the party’s electoral support during the 2016 local government elections.
When will the ANC president wake up and smell the coffee?
If he or any of his supporters ever doubted that he no longer enjoyed support in a number of ANC structures, the rebellion shown by a number of ANC MPs in supporting the opposition parties’ motion to remove him from power proved beyond reasonable doubt that he has lost control of his own party.
As expected, Zuma’s supporters this week were quick to call for disciplinary action against the ANC MPs who went against the party’s orders to vote for him to remain in his position.
It was the first time in the history of South Africa’s young democracy that any MP from the governing party had voted in favour of a motion to topple its leader.
There have been six previous motions of no confidence against Zuma since he became president in 2009, all conducted by a show of hands. Not a single ANC MP voted against Zuma in these, possibly for fear of being victimised. But the latest motion, which was done with a secret ballot, allowed ANC MPs to express themselves freely on how they felt about Zuma.
The ANC president would like us to believe that the ANC MPs who voted against him did so not because they were gatvol with his leadership, but because they had received bribes from the enemies of the revolutionary movement — who, he believes,
“They spent a lot of money. If they give you money, take it, pay for the schools and vote right. That is the principle”