Zuma won’t go down without a fight: analyst
President Jacob Zuma is certainly in the hot seat as the ANC NEC debate whether or not he should be recalled, and the president will either come out victorious – or go down fighting.
This is according to political analyst, Professor Lesiba Teffo, who said in an interview with radio 702 that the ANC has reached an irredeemable state under Zuma – but the politics of expediency will likely keep him in power.
In a surprise move over the past weekend, minister of tourism Derek Hanekom reportedly put in an official motion to have president Zuma recalled, catching Zuma supporters off-guard. The move pushed the NEC meeting into a third day.
According to Teffo, the hope would be that things would supposedly go the way people want them to – that people would vote in favour of Zuma stepping down, “but I am not particularly optimistic about that,” he said.
“As much as we might say (Zuma’s) intellectual capital is not the best, he has been shrewd in getting the people into positions that matter, to the extent that when it matters most in terms of survival, they would come in his favour.”
The analyst said that, while there is no doubt that many of the ANC members are no happy with Zuma as their leader, the question is whether they would be willing to risk their careers to vote him out.
“Most of (the pro-Zuma ANC), if they were to step down, they would not have any job outside of politics,” Teffo said.
The ANC puts itself ahead of the Nation
Teffo said that the current debate happening at the NEC was all about the ANC itself, and not in the interests of South Africa as whole.
“It’s interesting that the debate is about the ANC – the elders in the ANC, the 101, they speak about the ANC, not about the country, not about the nation. It’s not about saving the country, it’s about saving the ANC. It has more to do with their pride, their individual egos, with their legacies, rather than national interest,” Teffo said.
“We understand, logically, that if the ANC fails, the country fails – but at what point do you put more emphasis: is it on the ANC or the nation? Zuma tells you and I, it’s about the ANC first, the country later – and this debate is also about that.”
Teffo said that his “sense” of the current political landscape is that people have reached the point where they accept that, in the entire history of liberation movement, the ANC has reached an irredeemable state.
“Once a liberation movement reaches this stage, it is almost impossible to redeem itself. It needs to go away for 5 or 10 years, reform itself, and come back,” he said.
“There are those who are saying ‘in any event we are on our way out, let’s go down with our man (Zuma)’ – these are the victors of Polokwane (where Mbeki was recalled), who came out victorious, not on principle, but on expediency. Things are worse now than in 2007, yet they are not acting consistently with what informed them then,” he said.
If, by some chance, the NEC elected to recall Zuma – he would not go out quietly and silently, Teffo said.
“His supporters will be aware of what such a decision would mean for them – that is enough to keep him (Zuma) fighting on.”
Despite the probable Zuma victory at the NEC, Teffo does not believe a Cabinet reshuffle will happen – as that would do untold damage to the ANC, further divide the party, and spell doom for its prospects in 2019.
“There is more soul in the ANC that just Zuma. If they do not speak up and speak out, it will mean bad things for 2019,” he said.
Read: Zuma’s fate hanging by a thread – these are the ministers who want him to go
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