South Africa's ruling party
decided on Tuesday to sack Jacob Zuma as the country's president, a
senior official said, after a marathon meeting over the fate of a leader
whose scandal-plagued years in power darkened and divided Nelson
Mandela's post-apartheid 'Rainbow Nation'.
The decision by the African National Congress's (ANC) national
executive followed 13 hours of tense deliberations and one face-to-face
meeting between Zuma and his presumed successor, deputy president Cyril
Ramaphosa.
Zuma, a polygamous Zulu traditionalist with no formal education, has
been living on borrowed time since Ramaphosa, a union leader and lawyer
once tipped as Mandela's pick to take over the reins, was elected as
head of the 106-year-old ANC in December.
Ramaphosa narrowly defeated Zuma's ex-wife and preferred successor,
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, in the leadership vote, forcing him to tread
carefully in handling Zuma for fear of deepening the rifts in the party a
year ahead of an election.
Despite the damning decision to order Zuma's "recall" - ANC-speak
for 'remove from office' - domestic media have speculated that the
75-year-old might yet defy the party's wishes, forcing it into the
indignity of having to unseat him in parliament.
Shortly before midnight, the SABC state broadcaster said Zuma had
been told in person by Ramaphosa that he had 48 hours to resign. A
senior party source later told Reuters Zuma had made clear he was going
nowhere.
"Cyril went to speak with him," the source said, adding that when
Ramaphosa returned to the ANC meeting in a Pretoria hotel, the
discussions were "tense and difficult".
"We decided to recall Zuma. He hasn't been told yet," the source said.
The ANC is expected to hold a media briefing in the afternoon to reveal the results of the meeting.
One domestic report said Zuma had asked for three months to resign, a
request that was denied. Another report said Zuma simply told
Ramaphosa: "Do what you want to do".
Zuma's spokesman did not answer his mobile phone.
On Friday, one of his wives, Tobeka Madiba-Zuma, posted comments on
Instagram suggesting Zuma, who has challenged and defied attempts by the
ANC and courts to rein him in, was prepared to fight and believed he
was the victim of a Western conspiracy.
"He will finish what he started because he does not take orders beyond the Atlantic Ocean," she said.
South Africa's economy, the most sophisticated on the continent, has
stagnated during Zuma's nine-year tenure, with banks and mining
companies reluctant to invest because of policy uncertainty and rampant
corruption.
However, since mid-November when Ramaphosa emerged as a real ANC
leadership prospect, economic confidence has started to pick up, while
the rand - a telling barometer of Zuma's fortunes - has gained more than
15 percent against the dollar.
"GONER"
The ANC's decisive overnight move against Zuma after nearly two
weeks of dithering mirrors the fate that he himself meted out to
then-President Thabo Mbeki in 2008 after being elected to the helm of
the party.
The removal of Zuma, an anti-apartheid activist who spent 10 years
alongside Mandela in the notorious Robben Island prison camp, also
echoes generational changes sweeping through the anti-colonial
liberation movements in charge of southern Africa.
In August, Jose Eduardo dos Santos stepped down after 38 years as
president of oil-rich Angola and three months later Zimbabwe's military
unseated 93-year-old Robert Mugabe, the only leader the country had
known since independence in 1980.
Although Zuma retains a hard core of faithful inside the ANC and in
the rural heartlands of his native KwaZulu-Natal province, there will be
few tears shed in South Africa's urban centers, where many regard him
with derision and contempt.
"He's a goner," the Sowetan, a tabloid popular with urban black
South Africans, screamed in a front-page headline above a picture of
Zuma sitting with his head held in his hand.
Central to the public anger have been the persistent allegations -
now the focus of a judicial commission - that Zuma let his friends the
Guptas use their relationship with him to win state contracts and
influence cabinet appointments.
Zuma and the three Gupta brothers, who were born in India but moved
to South Africa in the early 1990s, have denied any wrongdoing.
The Guptas' whereabouts are currently unknown, although
plane-tracking websites showed their private jet flying last week from
India to Dubai to Russia.
In addition to the massive Gupta-related "state capture" scandal,
South Africans were outraged by a state-funded $16 million security
upgrade to Zuma's rural Nkandla home that included a cattle kraal and
swimming pool.
At the time, Zuma's police minister justified the pool as a "fire-fighting resource".
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