■ A former president of South Africa denounced the ruling African National Congress party.

JOHANNESBURG — Former President Jacob Zuma on Saturday denounced the governing African National Congress party and announced that he would vote for a newly formed political formation in South Africa’s general election next year.

Zuma, who was president of the ANC from 2007 to 2017, said that he’s backing the newly-formed Umkhonto we Sizwe party that is named after the ANC’S now-defunct military wing, which was disbanded after the liberation struggle.

Zuma, 81, called on other South Africans to vote for the new formation, saying it would be “a betrayal to vote for the ANC” of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The country’s general election scheduled for 2024 is expected to be highly contested, because the ruling ANC, which has governed the country since Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically-elected leader in 1994, faces myriad challenges.

Recent polls have suggested that the ANC could for the first time garner less than 50 percent of the national vote in next year’s election and may need to form a coalition government to remain in power.