South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party, in a remarkable rebuke, suspended its former president Jacob Zuma on Monday for launching “abusive attacks” on the organization after he threw his support behind a rival political party .
Calling Mr Zuma’s behavior “erratic” and “subversive” ahead of crucial national elections this year, one of the ANC’s top officials effectively attacked the former president as an agent of “right-wing” forces seeking to stifle black progress.
“Former president Zuma is actively asserting himself as the face of the counter-revolution in South Africa,” said Fikile Mbalula, the ANC’s secretary-general, reading from a statement by the party’s top decision-making body.
It was a surprising turn of events for a former freedom fighter who was once imprisoned alongside Nelson Mandela on Robben Island. Mr Zuma later rose to power as leader of the ANC and the nation, dispensing populist rhetoric that attracted ardent followers.
“It’s a great characterization, there’s no doubt about it,” Bongani Ngqulunga, who teaches politics at the University of Johannesburg and was Mr Zuma’s spokesman when he was the nation’s president, said of the ANC’s statement. “It simply demonstrates the estrangement between former President Zuma and the political party he served and led.”
The suspension marks a break from Mr Zuma’s corrosive legacy from party leaders who had spent years defending him against allegations of corruption and wrongdoing even as his actions eroded public support. It is also a show of strength by President Cyril Ramaphosa, Mr Zuma’s nemesis, as he seeks re-election.
“Those nine years were largely characterized by negatives, which we are now coming out of,” Mr Balula said of Mr Zuma’s tenure as South Africa’s president.
But the suspension — the first time the ANC has taken such action against a former president — could also carry risks for the party. This year’s election, analysts and even some ANC members say, could dip it below an outright majority for the first time since the end of apartheid 30 years ago.
In the weeks since he announced he would not vote for his party this year, Mr Zuma, 81, has drawn huge crowds at rallies for a new political organisation, Spear of the Nation, named after the apartheid ANC- era armed wing.
Analysts say the impact of Mr Zuma’s support for the new party, also known as uMkhonto we Sizwe, or MK, has been unpredictable. He may draw votes from the African National Congress, but he could rally his supporters. The election is expected to be close, particularly in Mr Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal.
“I don’t expect Zuma to have a huge national following,” said Ongama Mtimka, a political analyst and lecturer at Nelson Mandela University. But, he said, “the ANC is in a position where it cannot lose any support, however small”.
The suspension letter to Mr Zuma, obtained by The New York Times, said he had breached his oath of office and the party’s constitution. He said he had brought the party into disrepute and had collaborated with a political organization opposed to its aims. So serious were his actions, the letter said, that the party immediately suspended him.
Mr Balula accused Mr Zuma of insinuating the ANC could commit electoral fraud, rhetoric that “angers a political base to incite social unrest”, he said.
It was not immediately clear whether Mr Zuma could challenge his suspension or face an internal disciplinary process.
Lebogang Moepeng, second deputy leader of the MK Party, said he would meet with Mr Zuma on Monday night to discuss his response to the suspension.
Mr Zuma serves as the face of an MK party that has sought to position itself as more radical and populist on issues such as land redistribution, but analysts say it will be difficult to disassociate him from the ANC in the minds of many voters. In recent weeks, some party leaders have tried to persuade Mr Zuma to return to the fold, a sign of the influence he still wields.
Mr Zuma has denounced members of Mr Ramaphosa’s government as “sellouts” and said he was campaigning to have another party punish them. “My conscience will not allow me to lie to the people of South Africa,” Mr Zuma said in a statement read out by one of his daughters, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla. last month.
“This has all come as a complete surprise to all of us,” Mr Ramaphosa said of his predecessor’s break with the party in an interview with public broadcaster SABC on Monday night.
Convicted of contempt for defying a court order to testify before a national corruption inquiry in 2021, Mr Zuma does not meet the legal requirements to run for president. A wave of protests after his imprisonment led to some of the deadliest riots in South Africa since the end of apartheid.
After spending just two months in prison, he was released from prison on medical parole after doctors told him he was terminally ill and unable to complete his 15-month prison sentence. A judge rejected the medical discharge. But Mr Zuma was returned to prison for less than two hours and then released under an early release program that critics say the ANC government adopted to shield its former leader from legal consequences.
Earlier this year, Mr Balula admitted leaders had lied about Mr Zuma when an independent watchdog found he had used state funds to upgrade his compound in KwaZulu-Natal. Even when it suspended Mr Zuma, the party was slow to move against him, said Mashupye Maserumule, a professor of public relations at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria.
“Zuma is a creation of the ANC,” said Prof Maserumule.
