Truth be told, opposition parties pray that Zuma stays in power till 2019

Be careful what you wish for. SA's opposition parties want Jacob Zuma dislodged as president, but keeping him in power for as long as possible may suit their electoral chances come 2019. The ANC members are having to read the weather vane: if Zuma goes then many jobs are on the line, but if he stays, party loyalists will be roasted for protecting a fatally compromised man. So long as Zuma remains in power, the opposition can mine his failing presidency for all it is worth, reminding voters for the next two years how seriously he has damaged this country. Bloomberg explores how this could play out.


South African opposition parties trying to get President Jacob Zuma to resign are in a conundrum: if they bring down an unpopular president they may lose their best chance to win the next election.

"I suspect opposition leaders are eternally torn on the subject," said Daryl Glaser, a political science professor at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits). "A lot of them may genuinely want Zuma to go and they may hope that his going spawns a kind of chaos and division in the ruling party that they could benefit from. It is also undeniable that Zuma is something of an electoral asset to opposition parties."

Since he took power in May 2009, Zuma, has been dogged by scandal, and is on his fourth finance minister in less than two years, with S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings cutting SA’s credit rating to junk. The ANC suffered its worst-ever electoral performance since the end of apartheid in a municipal vote in August that saw it lose control of Pretoria and Johannesburg.

Tens of thousands of people have joined street demonstrations since Zuma fired Pravin Gordhan as finance minister in March. Opposition parties have joined church and civil rights groups to push for Zuma’s ouster. Several top ANC leaders have said the party risks losing power in 2019 elections if he is allowed to complete his second five-year term.

Even the unions that helped him win control of the ANC have turned on him. Planned speeches by Zuma and others were cancelled on Monday when members of Cosatu booed him at May Day celebrations in Bloemfontein. The South African Communist Party (SACP), which like Cosatu are in an alliance with the ANC, have joined calls from ANC veterans, church and civil-rights groups for Zuma to resign or be fired.

Zuma has indicated that he favours Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, his ex-wife, mother of four of his children and former head of the AU Commission, to succeed him as ANC leader when he steps down in December. The other frontrunner for the post is Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has criticised Zuma’s decision to fire Gordhan and spoken out against corruption.

"From our own messaging point of view, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma would probably be seen as a continuation of more of the same," said DA leader Mmusi Maimane. While Ramaphosa could be seen by some as a "new broom who sweeps clean" and that the ANC was redeemable, "in truth, the system is broken", he said.

The president has said he will not voluntarily relinquish office early and accused his critics of racism and trying to frustrate his plans to bring about "radical economic transformation". The ANC has backed Zuma so far, saying the country’s woes cannot be pinned on him alone.

Zuma is also facing a motion no confidence in Parliament where the ANC holds a 62% majority. The Constitutional Court is currently considering whether to decide if there should be a secret ballot, and if it rules that there should be, disgruntled ANC MPs who have previously helped squash several previous no-confidence motions could side with the opposition without risking losing their jobs.

"It seems the opposition parties are trying to have it both ways," Cherrel Africa, a political science professor at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), said. "If the motion of no confidence works, then they can say they got rid of Zuma. If it doesn’t then they can say the ANC is protecting Zuma."

Zwelethu Jolobe, a political science lecturer at the University of Cape Town (UCT), said most ANC MPs who do want Zuma to go early would wait until after the December leadership vote to try and oust him. And even if the vote to get rid of Zuma did succeed, that would not necessarily signal an end to the country’s leadership malaise, he said.

"The opposition parties have raised some substantive issues, but they are still heavily focused on getting rid of Zuma," Jolobe said. "Should this happen, then who will succeed him? The ANC has no clear successor to Zuma. No one knows what the consequences of such a motion would be."

Bloomberg