City Press<\/a>, Magashule’s supporters within the upper reaches of the party held meetings this past weekend to plot the secretary general’s defence as well as to address ‘leadership issues’ within the party.<\/p>\nThey reportedly want to review the composition of party leadership ahead of the party’s National General Conference to be held in 2021 – which analysts believe, is a call to remove Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n
The latest charges against Magashule are seen by him and his supporters as politically motivated. The National Prosecuting Authority, meanwhile, says it has a strong case against him.<\/p>\n
The ANC\u2019s top leadership issued a directive in August that all members who face legal charges should step aside from their duties, though none has done so yet, Bloomberg reported.<\/p>\n
Magashule suggested he\u2019ll defy any order by the party\u2019s National Executive Committee to step aside. \u201cNobody can remove us,\u201d Magashule said.<\/p>\n
The ANC is currently working on a legal framework that will set out the conditions under which members should step aside. It\u2019s expected to discuss Magashule\u2019s position at its next meeting, a date for which hasn\u2019t been announced yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cAce Magashule is going nowhere,\u201d Tony Yengeni, a member of the NEC, told the crowd of supporters. \u201cHe will finish his term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Removing Ramaphosa<\/strong><\/p>\nWhile the ANC puts up a united front, behind the scenes the party often wages different factional wars, with members in the national executive council (NEC) representing varying interests.<\/p>\n
The moves against Ramaphosa are also nothing new. In a NEC meeting held at the end of August, some members – including convicted fraud, Tony Yengeni – had mooted his removal ahead of proceedings.<\/p>\n
In an analysis of the ANC’s political make-up following the party’s August NEC meeting, Intellidex analyst Peter Attard Montalto said it was unlikely that any calls to remove the president would fly until at least 2022, when the ANC elective conference will be held.<\/p>\n
The analyst said that while it seems as if the president enjoys wide support within his party, the fractured make-up of the NEC since 2017 – when Ramaphosa dramatically beat out former president Jacob Zuma’s preferred successor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for the presidency – persists today.<\/p>\n
“(Ramaphosa) continues to have a broad majority, but that is factious and composed of many smaller sub-factions, as we have often outlined since NASREC,” Attard Montalto said.<\/p>\n
“These elements have no intention of moving against him except at the 2022 elective conference, where the broad and fragile nature of his coalition is important. Some elements are certainly considering splitting off \u2013 such as Cosatu which is already somewhat split against him and raising red flags on both corruption and growth plans.”<\/p>\n
However, the analyst said that even these factions were unlikely to side with the ‘opposition’ internally – now characterised as a so-called ‘Magashule faction’ – to remove Ramaphosa early.<\/p>\n
This is because there is no viable alternative to Ramaphosa at this stage whatsoever, he said, while noting that it is “almost impossible” to remove the ANC President via that route, requiring five of nine provinces to back a motion of removal and then a majority at the NEC.<\/p>\n
“We think (that plan) would fall at both hurdles,” he said.<\/p>\n
\nRead: Magashule officially charged with corruption, fraud and money-laundering<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The supporters of ANC secretary general Ace Magashule are leading a flare up of factionalism within the party, with moves that are being read by political analysts as a call to recall president Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":423010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-448583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448583"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448601,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448583\/revisions\/448601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}