South Africa’s ANC backs Zuma after calls for him to quit

Scandal-ridden South African President Jacob Zuma has survived an unprecedented challenge to his rule within his own party, which said Tuesday it “did not support” a call for him to step down.

The party’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, Tuesday confirmed that a call had been made during the meeting for Mr. Zuma to consider stepping down.

African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party, held the NEC meeting on November 26-28.

“The fact that the majority of the ANC NEC members chose pay cheques and power over the people of South Africa requires the country to accept that the only way to stop the decay and get our country moving forward again is to remove the ANC‚ once and for all”, he said.

Assuming that Zuma detractors at the meeting were, as Mantashe says, “persuaded” to feel otherwise, it is safe to say that confidence in our current number one is being maintained exclusively by force, teetering precariously on the edge of total collapse.

He’s scheduled to step down as the ANC’s leader in December next year and his second term as national president ends in 2019. “Following robust, honest, candid and at times hard discussions, the NEC did not support the call for the president to step down”. “It was discussed sufficiently, exhaustively”. But he added that the most serious threats against the ANC were not negative perceptions of Zuma, but sexism, racism, ethnic nationalism and monopoly capital.

Mr Zuma’s popularity within the ANC has begun to decline over the past year because of a string of corruption and economic mismanagement allegations levelled against him.

South Africa’s anti-corruption czar recently released a 355-page report documenting the president’s links to a wealthy family whose members have allegedly steered Cabinet decisions and improperly influenced government contracts. Zuma has denied that the Guptas influenced his decisions. Zuma using taxpayer money for upgrades to the compound embroiled him in an earlier scandal over misuse of funds.

In recent months, senior ANC figures have broken with ANC tradition and openly campaigned for Zuma’s departure. Under intense pressure, Zuma reappointed former finance minister Pravin Gordhan to the post. As the party seeks to move forward, all eyes will be on what happens to those who took on the president, and lost. Mantashe suggested another issue that likely came up from those who want Zuma to remain president.

The ANC led the struggle against the racist and repressive apartheid regime and then took power in 1994 in South Africa’s first free elections. A popular figure among ANC prisoners, he learned to read in prison on Robben Island.

Zuma, who weathered a motion of no-confidence in parliament over the cost of the renovations, has since paid back more than $500,000 as required by the court.

A rally by Save South Africa, a group described by one local newspaper as “a who’s who of [anti-apartheid] struggle stalwarts‚ religious leaders‚ business people and civic activists”, attracted hundreds in Pretoria earlier this month.