Zuma given standing ovation by ANC top brass
The City Press reports that any initiatives to force president Jacob Zuma to step down amid serious allegations of state capture, have lost steam.
The top brass of South Africa’s leading political party, the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC), instead greeted president Jacob Zuma with a standing ovation as he arrived for a meeting on Friday, in Pretoria.
The political party gathered at the Saint George’s Hotel in Irene, Pretoria, this weekend to discuss the organisation’s most pressing issues.
The scandal around the president’s relationship with the Gupta family, and their alleged attempts at state capture, however, was not discussed.
Secretary General Gwede Mantashe told reporters the matter was not on the agenda.
Former chair of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises, Vytjie Mentor, publically revealed this week that she was offered the job of Minister of Public Enterprises by the Guptas on one condition: she “drops the SAA flight-route to India and give to them”.
Mentor further alleged that president Zuma was on the Guptas Saxonwold premises at the time, in a room next door.
Mentor’s utterances have led to several ANC members speaking out on similar encounters with the Guptas, including Deputy Finance Minister, Mcebisi Jonas, Public Service and Administration Minister, Ngoako Ramathlodi and former Public Enterprises Minister, Barbara Hogan.
According to a report in the City Press, the pro-Zuma group in the ANC worked on a plan throughout the night on Thursday to defend him at all costs, ‘including hanging out the dirty laundry of those gunning for the president’.
“We were waiting for them to start it today,” said an NEC member sympathetic to Zuma on Friday.
“There was that thing that they want to recall the president. It was going to get very dirty and they retreated.”
He said a proposal for a special national conference of the ANC to elect new leaders was was quickly dismissed as it was supported by no more than two people, ‘while others soon realised that the numbers were against them’.
Read the full article in the March 20 edition of the City Press
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