Time to 'junk' Jacob Zuma, says Maimane

South Africa s political crisis has intensified as tens of thousands of people joined demonstrations across the country calling for Jacob Zuma to step down police fired rubber bullets in scattered clashes and a second ratings agency downgraded the country to junk status. Thousands marched through the rainy centre of Johannesburg the commercial capital on Friday amid a heavy police presence. A large protest also took place in front of parliament in Cape Town. Smaller crowds of a few hundred people protested on suburban street corners and bridges in the main cities and towns. South Africa: ANC in chaos after Jacob Zuma sacks finance minister Read more One protester Lydia Potgieter 69 said she was there to support the efforts of all South Africans to be rid of a corrupt system that is eating away everything we have worked for over the last 20 years . Thana Dzwane 27 had left her office with five colleagues to attend the rally. It s about Zuma and his people she said. They are ruining the country. Things are only going to get worse unless there is a change soon. In Pretoria the administrative capital thousands more gathered at the Union Buildings the seat of government carrying banners reading Zuma not my president and the power of the people is stronger than the people in power . Analysts have described the crisis triggered by a cabinet reshuffle last week in which widely respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan was sacked as the most serious to face South Africa since minority white rule ended more than 20 years ago. It has laid bare deep divisions within the country and within the African National Congress the party that led the liberation struggle and has ruled since 1994. Zuma a party veteran in power since 2009 has been accused of filling posts in key institutions with loyalists packing party committees with supporters and maintaining inappropriate relations with a powerful family of local tycoons. The 74-year-old who has been named in hundreds of corruption charges denies any wrongdoing. I think this is a really important moment said Nic Cheeseman an expert in democracy in Africa at Birmingham University. The South African state is under threat The system now has problems throughout. A lot of these tendencies were latent and Zuma has been so damaging because he has brought them out. The sacking of Gordhan the finance minister led to a slide in the value of South Africa s rand currency and an almost immediate downgrading by international ratings agency Standard and Poor s. A second agency Fitch Ratings downgraded South Africa on Friday. Zuma has brushed aside calls for his resignation from veterans of the liberation struggle unions and South Africa s Communist party a historical ally of the ANC. A powerful ANC committee backed the president last week and he is expected to survive a no confidence vote in parliament later this month. There is a battle for the soul of the ANC Cheeseman said. There is the party of Nelson Mandela and the Freedom Charter; there is Zuma and his acolytes who want to use the party for their own interests. It is unclear who will win out ... but we are clearly moving downhill. Though members of all South Africa s communities were present at the protests South Africa s white minority less than10% of the population was disproportionately represented. There is a change coming said Potgieter. The white people are the middle class people. Until now they have just sat down and taken it easy while black people have done something. Now there is more mobilisation. ANC loyalists accuse the main opposition party the centre-right Democratic Alliance of being run by whites and big business CEOs . Kedibone Khumalo a http://buybacklinkz.blogdon.net/increase-traffic-to-your-blog-with-backlinks-2811787 31-year-old from a small town in rural Free State who travelled for four hours in a bus with her local ANC branch to join a Zuma support demonstration outside the party s headquarters in Johannesburg said: The whites don t like Zuma but actually he looks after everybody. It is a good government. You get roads homes free medical aid if you are pregnant. Zuma will step down as ANC president later this year. His replacement is likely to lead the country if as is widely predicted the party wins elections due in 2019. Many pundits say the ANC which suffered heavy losses in last year s municipal polls may garner less than 50% of the vote which would be a major blow. Investors fear a slew of populist measures which may further weaken a flagging economy. Malusi Gigaba the new finance minister has pledged to accelerate radical economic transformation which would redistribute wealth currently concentrated in the hands of a small part of the population . South Africa has 54 million inhabitants but just 10% possess more than 90% of the country s wealth. Ownership of land and companies remains mostly in South Africa s white communities. Zuma has recently spoken of a new bid to expropriate land without compensation from big farmers. This may play well with key rural communities which are strongholds of the ANC but has less resonance in cities where Zuma is deeply unpopular. Hundreds of ANC supporters some bearing sticks and bricks others wearing combat uniforms guarded the party s headquarters on Friday. Police fired rubber bullets after some attempted to disrupt the opposition march. Sifiso Motsweni a senior official in the ANC Youth League said the party was just defending its property from opposition thugs and accused opposition parties of trying to use unconstitutional means by taking to the streets. We are not going to listen to white people and white CEOs who do not represent the majority of South Africans This is not a race issue. White people continue to be the bosses to hold http://buybacklinksz.pointblog.net/Backlinks-Basics-And-How-Good-Websites-Go-Bad-With-Backlinks-5362691 the economy and the land. That is not racist it is real said Motsweni. Dzwane who joined the Johannesburg protest against Zuma with her colleagues said: This is not about being white or black or whatever. It is about what s best for the country. Photo President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria South Africa on Tuesday. Credit Kopano Tlape/Government Communication and Information System via European Pressphoto Agency JOHANNESBURG The African National Congress in South Africa closed ranks on Wednesday behind President Jacob Zuma who has faced growing criticism and calls for his resignation after firing a widely respected finance minister last week.The A.N.C. Mr. Zuma s party also chastised three of its senior leaders who in a break from party tradition openly criticized the president s actions last week. That public dissonance was a mistake that will not happen again the party s secretary general Gwede Mantashe said at a news conference after a meeting of the party s leaders.On Friday Mr. Zuma abruptly dismissed the finance minister Pravin Gordhan in an apparent show of force meant to consolidate his faction s power before the A.N.C. s national conference in December when a new party leader and most likely the country s next president will be chosen.The firing instead deepened divisions in the party and caused a backlash among voters.Top party leaders condemned the firing which was part of a broader cabinet reshuffle saying that Mr. Zuma had not consulted them. The deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa called the decision unacceptable. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But on Wednesday the A.N.C. said it accepted Mr. Zuma s reason for firing Mr. Gordhan which Mr. Mantashe said was the irretrievable breakdown of the relationship between the president and a member of his cabinet. Mr. Zuma and Mr. Gordhan members of two rival A.N.C. factions have been engaged in a long dispute about control of party and state coffers.Seen as a bulwark against the misuse of public funds Mr. Gordhan was respected for his oversight of state enterprises. His dismissal and replacement by a Zuma loyalist led the ratings agency Standard & Poor s to downgrade South Africa s government debt to junk status. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The show of unity on Wednesday failed to close the widening fissures in South Africa s governing party.Mr. Zuma s staunchest supporters held rallies and attacked his internal critics. Nomvula Mokonyane the minister of water and sanitation denounced S.&P. for the downgrade. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The West can t dictate to us Ms. Mokonyane told a gathering of A.N.C. youths adding These junk ratings have nothing to do with financial ratings it s political ratings. Please verify you re not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times s products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. You are already subscribed to this email. View all New York Times newsletters. See Sample Manage Email Preferences Not you? Privacy Policy On the other side some of the party s veterans called for Mr. Zuma s resignation as did its two closest traditional allies the South African Communist Party and Cosatu a powerful http://buybacklinksz.total-blog.com/what-are-backlinks-why-do-you-need-them-5467790 trade union federation.Mr. Zuma s second and final term as president ends in 2019 but his party is scheduled to elect a new leader at the conference in December. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Two of the leading contenders are Mr. Ramaphosa who belongs to the mostly urban wing of the party and Nkosozana Dlamini-Zuma a former chairwoman of the African Union who was once married to Mr. Zuma and who represents a mostly rural faction dependent on the patronage politics practiced by the president. Advertisement Continue reading the main story What we had until the cabinet reshuffle was a stalemate said Steven Friedman a political scientist at the University of Johannesburg. Neither faction had a clear sense of who was winning or who was losing. Each side respected the other side s territory. One side accepted that the finance minister would have to stay and the other side accepted that the president would have to stay. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Now of course the stalemate is over Mr. Friedman said. Zuma and his faction have chosen to break the stalemate. Whether or not Mr. Zuma s faction prevails in December the president will leave behind a greatly diminished A.N.C. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Under him the party of Nelson Mandela has become an organization dominated by corruption and patronage. Once admired across Africa for its moral standing it now inspires disappointment and disillusionment for many.Ever the survivor Mr. Zuma has remained in office despite a series of scandals that would have felled a lesser tactician. Last year South Africa s highest court found that the president had violated the Constitution in his handling of a long-running corruption case involving his private home in Nkandla in the southeast of the country. But the party rebuffed efforts to impeach him. His conduct has caused serious damage to the A.N.C. said Aubrey Matshiqi a political analyst. His self-interest has always come before the interests of the A.N.C. and the country. Follow Norimitsu Onishi on Twitter @onishinyt. A version of this article appears in print on April 6 2017 on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: A.N.C. Backs Zuma Papering Over Divide in South Africa. Order Reprints| Today s Paper|Subscribe Continue reading the main story South Africa s President Jacob Zuma has won the backing of the ruling ANC party which rejected calls for him to resign over a controversial cabinet reshuffle. The African National Congress on Wednesday acknowledged growing calls for Zuma to step down admitting to serious and difficult disagreement over the president s sacking of respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan last week. Zuma could either be ousted by the ANC recalling him or a vote of no confidence in parliament that has been scheduled for April 18. The party retains a large majority in parliament and Zuma has easily survived previous confidence votes. ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe told reporters on Wednesday that although the party had reflected on the resignation demands we won t recall President Jacob Zuma because opposition parties http://buybacklinksz.onesmablog.com/You-Can-Crush-Competition-When-You-Use-High-Value-Backlinks-6040505 say so. It won t work that way . Zuma has been under fire for several days - including from within his own camp - after dismissing Gordhan a decision that caused the rand currency to plummet. Gordhan s removal triggered unprecedented criticism from Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa as well as the party s treasurer and several ANC allies. Ramaphosa who could succeed Zuma described it as totally unacceptable . South Africa s powerful trade union federation Cosatu this week joined many anti-apartheid veterans business leaders and civil action groups calling for Zuma to step down. Mantashe - who was among those who had hit out at Zuma in recent days - said ANC would close ranks around the president and the party would iron out its differences with trade unions. Mantashe blamed Gordhan s sacking on the irretrievable breakdown in relations with the president. Gordhan was at loggerheads with Zuma for months receiving support from several ministers and major foreign investors as well as many ordinary South Africans. Gordhan had campaigned for budget discipline and against corruption but Zuma s allies accused him of thwarting the president s desire to enact radical policies to tackle racial inequality. Gordhan s sacking contributed to a credit ratings downgrade to junk status on Monday by Standard & Poor s further fuelling calls for Zuma to step down. The president has defended his change at the Treasury saying that the government s financial policies remained the same. What s behind South African finance minister s sacking? - Inside Story Source: News agencies