Zuma takes new swipe at Ramaphosa

The newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe party will cripple the ANC’s electoral support in the 2024 national elections, says former president Jacob Zuma, who has vowed to ensure the ruling party does not get the 50-plus-one majority needed to govern.

Zuma was yesterday speaking to party supporters at Mzo Lifestyle restaurant in Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal, two weeks after announcing he would not campaign or vote for the ANC, which he has been a member of for more than 62 years.

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He said the ANC led by Cyril Ramaphosa was not the organisation he knew and, as such, uMkhonto weSizwe would rescue it from the current leadership.

“We will remove it whether they like it or not. The ANC is not owned by a few people, the ANC belongs to the people of South Africa,” he said.

“When you are in the ANC, you must feel happy, you must have a right to talk and not be stopped, you must have a right to be elected and be able to help our people.”

Zuma has announced on several occasions he would not vote for the ANC and urged its members to vote for other progressive parties.

“When we get a chance, we will explain this because some know nothing about uMkhonto but continue to speak,” Zuma said.

“We still have over five months. If they ask us what they have done wrong, we will tell them … because we are not scared.

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“We will explain what uMkhonto weSizwe is when we start campaigning; how it came about, and leave those who say it’s fake.”

He accused the ANC leadership which won at the 2017 national conference of disrespecting the will of the delegates.

“When Ramaphosa was first elected, we decided the land must go back to its rightful owners; we said the Reserve Bank should be owned by the state and many other things, but the leadership did not do one of the things we decided,” he said.

“They disrespected us. These are things we are going to explain… We need to explain if Ramaphosa is even a real president of the ANC.

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“We will free South Africa again for the black people because we are not free. The same people we sent are the ones now oppressing us.”

ANC Youth League president Collen Malatji last week said Zuma’s decision to publicly denounce the ANC was ill-disciplined.

Zuma and other ill-disciplined ANC members were “lucky the party was led by a soft president” in Ramaphosa, because if he was its leader, they would be gone.

“We would rather have an ANC of a few disciplined people than an ANC with a lot of ill-disciplined people,” he said.