I saw the Ramaphosa red flags a long time ago – Zuma

Former African National Congress (ANC) president Jacob Zuma says when everyone was excited about President Cyril Ramaphosa’s new dawn, he already knew his successor’s election was a bad idea.

Zuma spoke on Ramaphosa’s leadership and decisions that eventually pushed him to start a new political party.

The uMkhonto weSizwe Party will achieve what the ANC has failed to do, which is to implement the ruling party’s policies, Zuma told Newzroom Afrika on Sunday.

Zuma announced that he would not be voting or campaigning for the ANC this week.

“It would be a betrayal to campaign for the ANC under Ramaphosa,” he said in a media briefing last December.

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“The ANC has been reduced to an organisation hardly respected by those it sought to liberate. It’s clear they’re disappointed by the party’s conduct under the current leadership.”

‘No communication’

On Sunday, Zuma claimed that under the Ramaphosa leadership, some ANC leaders no longer talked to each other. This made it hard for leaders to resolve issues in the party.

“If you wanted to correct the situation and bring back the situation where it’s supposed to be, you could no longer do it through talking because the leaders, many of them are no longer talking,” said Zuma.

“Also how some of the leaders were attacking me when I’ve done nothing (wrong), we needed to find a way to bring back things to where they were before.”

He claimed that instead of talking to him about the problems in the ANC during his tenure, they decided to remove him from his position.

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“Ramaphosa knows my views about him because I discussed them within the party,” he said.

The communication struggles were also highlighted by party veteran Mavuso Msimang, who resigned in December, only to withdraw his resignation following a meeting with the party.

At the time, Msimang bemoaned the corruption and incompetence of some party members. He said the leaders did not take criticism well either.

“At worst those who seek change by raising their voices endure slurs or are met with downright hostility,” he wrote in his resignation letter.

Zuma: they voted with opposition

Under the Ramaphosa administration, some ANC leaders voted against him with the opposition in parliament, said Zuma.

“They violated the ANC policy. Some of them were very proud of it,” Zuma said.

He said this was hypocrisy among ANC leaders as nothing was done to them. He, however, did not receive the same treatment after he announced he would be voting for the MK party.

“I have not even voted for the MK party yet, but I’m already being punished for violating the policy,” he said.

These are why he thinks Ramaphosa is not the right person to lead the ANC, among others.

“I saw the red flags a long time ago.”

‘We were warned’

Former ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule has previously criticised Ramaphosa too, saying he and other leaders were warned against backing Ramaphosa for deputy president in 2012.

Ramaphosa served as then-president Jacob Zuma’s deputy until his ascension to the top seat after the 2017 Nasrec conference. He was elected president against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

Magashule was expelled from the ANC in June last year. He was charged with misconduct by the party for illegally suspending Ramaphosa.

The former ANC secretary-general said although he was expelled from the party under Ramaphosa’s leadership, he was one of the people who backed him for deputy president back in 2012 – but not without a warning.

“We didn’t know some of the things about him. We were prewarned and told certain things, and we just believed that he was the right man to lead. There are things I can’t talk about. We liked him because we had worked with him as a leader,” he told MacG’s Podcast and Chill.

READ MORE: We were warned about Ramaphosa, says Magashule