Jacob Zuma is likely to face a demand from South Africa’s ruling party to step down as the country’s president within two weeks, officials have said.
The premature departure of Zuma, whose second five-year term is due to expire next year, will consolidate the power of Cyril Ramaphosa, who was elected leader of the African National Congress (ANC) last month.
Supporters of Ramaphosa say it is essential that Zuma is sidelined as early as possible to allow the ANC to regroup before campaigning starts in earnest for elections due in 2019.
“We need time to clean everything up [and] show voters that we are [going] back to the real ANC’s values,” said one official loyal to Ramaphosa, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The party remains deeply split, however. Ace Magashule, the ANC’s secretary general, admitted there had been discussion at meeting of the party’s national executive committee last week about forcing Zuma to resign, but denied that a firm decision had been made.
“We have not arrived at the decision that Zuma must go or Zuma must not go. It is you, the media, who says Zuma must go,” Magashule, a Zuma loyalist, told reporters.
Zuma, 75, had led the ANC since 2007 and has been South Africa’s president since 2009. His tenure in both posts has been controversial, with a series of corruption scandals undermining the image and legitimacy of the party that led South Africans to freedom in 1994 and has ruled ever since.
Many commentators believe Zuma will be forced to resign before making the annual state of the nation address, due to be delivered on 8 February.
“[Zuma] has already been largely neutralised. We are seeing his last stabs at holding on to power … There is a consensus that he would be removed by the time of the elections next year but for all practical purposes campaigning has already started,” said Susan Booysen, a politics professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
The ANC still dominates the political landscape in South Africa but its popularity has been dented by a failure to fulfil expectations that it would transform the lives of the country’s poor. The party lost control of several cities in municipal elections in 2016 and may be forced into a coalition after the coming national election. “For the sake of the ANC’s electoral future, Zuma has to be out,” Booysen said.
Ramaphosa’s narrow win over the former cabinet minister and African Union Commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in the contest to become head of the ANC was seen as a pivotal moment for the party. Ramaphosa, who is currently South Africa’s deputy president, is likely to succeed Zuma as head of state, though there is a possibility that an interim leader may be appointed.
The former trade union leader has pledged to clean up the image of the ANC and tackle the corruption that has dogged Zuma’s tenure. He has already moved to appoint a new board to the troubled national electricity company, while the national prosecuting authority has started legal processes to freeze assets of a family of businessmen accused of improper relations with Zuma.
Richard Challand, a South Africa-based author and expert on the ANC, said “an age of impunity” might now be replaced by “a new era of public accountability”.
Ramaphosa, who arrived at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Monday, is expected to implement policy reforms that could boost South Africa’s flagging economy and bring in foreign investment. He said last week that South Africa was coming out of a “period of uncertainty, a period of darkness, and getting into a new phase”.
