South Africa: Former President Zuma floats new party, backs out of ruling ANC
Former South African president Jacob Zuma says he is creating a new political party as he ruled out his support for the ruling African National Congress ahead of the next presidential election.
Zuma said it “would be a betrayal” to campaign for the ANC of incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The former ANC top man was the country’s president between 2009 and 2018.
Mr Zuma said he has decided to name his new party uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), meaning spear of the nation. The new party got its name from the former armed wing of the ANC.
The MK paramilitary wing, in which Zuma was a key member, fought the apartheid-era government of South Africa and was later disbanded in 1993 before the election that ushered in the ANC led by the late Nelson Mandela.
He said: “The new people’s war starts today. The only crucial difference is instead of the bullet this time we will use the ballot.”
Mr Zuma said he was too sick to speak extensively at a news conference in Soweto, so one of his daughters read a statement on his behalf.
The statement said the ANC was “one of the great liberations movements of our time”, but that it “truly saddens me that the ANC of today is not the once great movement that we loved and were prepared to lay down our lives for”.
“I will die a member of the ANC,” his statement said, but that it had “changed into an organisation we no longer recognise”.
He said President Ramaphosa was a “proxy of white monopoly capital” and that the “ANC of Ramaphosa has declared war against black professionals and intellectuals”.
“I cannot and will not campaign for the ANC of Ramaphosa”.
The statement further described the government of Mr Ramaphosa as a failure.
Zuma resigned in 2018 amid in-house pressure from the ANC and was later succeeded as president by Mr Ramaphosa.
He was jailed in 2021 for refusing to testify before a panel probing his regime.
His eventual imprisonment triggered protests and riots that led to the deaths of more than 350 people.
