President Jacob Zuma speaks at the traditional leaders indaba at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg on 29 May 2017. The indaba allows a platform for stakeholders to discuss issues and the roles of traditional leaders in society and policy. Picture: Yeshiel Panchia
Victory for Jacob Zuma and ANC? No, but victory for democracy – that’s my take on what happened in parliament on Tuesday.
The celebrations of the ANC winning the ballot during the no-confidence motion were understood. The ruling party faced a moment of reckoning and were unsure if they would come out of it unscathed.
They stared defeat in the eyes – no wonder they burst into a frenzy of celebrations when the ballot results were in their favour.
It could not be a victory for a party that is used to large margins of electoral victory since it came to power in 1994.
Not so long ago, the ANC would go to any poll and be assured of coming out victorious. But not this time.
The time has arrived for the ruling party to keep looking over its shoulder – and the ballot results told us the ANC has to wake up and smell the coffee.
If voting to keep Zuma was a cause for their celebrations, they are in for a big disappointment in a few years. The real elephant in the room for many South Africans is the president himself and, if the ANC preferred to sacrifice itself on his altar of corruption, they must be prepared to burn with him.
The ballot result sent an unequivocal message to all and sundry that the ANC is not prepared to part ways with Zuma, but would rather go to political oblivion with him.
By electing to keep him at the helm until his term of office ends in 2019, they must know that the South African voter is ready to punish them electorally.
They promised to “self-correct” after losing crucial metros in the local government election but clearly they were throwing us a dummy.
The 249 or so ANC MPs and the estimated 700 000 paid-up party members in Luthuli House’s membership files are a drop in the ocean compared with the additional 10 million non-ANC South Africans who normally vote to give the party the majority it needs to stay in power.
Simple logic would tell you it is better to satisfy the 10 million if you are to remain in power.
But the ANC prefers to let Zuma tell them that only ANC members must tell him to go.
The ballot results of 177 votes in favour of the motion, 198 against and the nine abstentions should tell us the sand is shifting from under the ANC’s feet.
It would be foolhardy for the ANC to ignore the fact that the results were a huge gain for all the forces opposed to Zuma, inside and outside the ANC.
Never before had the ANC’s own parliamentarians voted in such huge numbers against the party position – least of all where the political fate of its leader is being decided.
The abstentions themselves told an interesting story: some ANC MPs would rather not vote than support their highly compromised president.
When Zuma told ANC fellows that the no-confidence motion was about regime change, he deliberately omitted to mention that Speaker Baleka Mbete would automatically have become acting president if the incumbent was ousted. Mbete is an ANC chairperson and, most probably, his successor.
This means the ANC would have remained in power if Zuma was voted out. So what is the hullabaloo about regime change all about? Nada, zilch!
The only regime change to come will be effected by the angry South African voters who would want to punish the ANC in 2019 for keeping Zuma.
Eric Naki.
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