Reporter Johnathan Paoli, Videographer Kgalalelo Setlhare and pictures by Eddie Mtsweni
A press conference by former President Jacob Zuma has been met with mixed feelings after he denounced the ANC and urged South Africans to vote for the newly formed party, uMkhonto weSizwe in next year’s elections.
Speaking in Orlando East on Saturday, Soweto Zuma accused the current ANC leadership of being a proxy for White Monopoly Capital and said the party can be rescued if people voted for uMkhonto weSizwe, a party named after the ANC’s military wing.
In a short statement issued to the media on Saturday, the ANC in KZN said Zuma’s announcement was an attempt to sway voters from the governing party.
“It is the duty of each party supporter to defend and protect the movement,” the party’s provincial spokesperson, Mafika Mndebele, said.
The spokesperson said that any call encouraging people not to vote for the ANC is counter-revolutionary.
“It’s a call to derail the national democratic revolution and our members must close ranks,” Mndebele said.
Tripartite alliance partner and union confederation Cosatu’s national spokesperson, Matthew Parks, dismissed Zuma’s decision, saying it was fueled by boredom and lacked coherence and called it nothing but simply a part of the election’s “silly season”.
Parks said the uncertainties surrounding the new party Zuma has declared his support for highlighted leadership problems as well as potential legal challenges from the ANC.
“Clearly we have a pensioner who’s quite bored with his life, he’s got a lot of time on his hands but it’s quite an incoherent statement, he says he’s an ANC member, yet he’s going to vote for a party which no one knows about, a party which hasn’t been launched, doesn’t have leadership, and a party whose chances of actually contesting elections is in doubt because the ANC is very likely to take them to court around copyright infringement,” Parks said.
Historically, the former president has proven to be an asset to the ruling party in relation to support in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Following Zuma’s election as ANC President in Polokwane 2007, he proceeded to win KZN for the party in 2009 with a whopping 63% from a mere 47% in 2004, jumping from 1.3 million to 2.2 million votes, an increase of over 900 000.
When it came to the 2019 elections, after his ousting as president, the ANC in the province suffered a massive blow and lost almost 600 000 votes.
Things continued to deteriorate for the party during the 2021 local government elections as they went below 50% for the first time ever in eThekwini and lost over 20 other municipalities in the province.
Former MK veteran Carl Niehaus, who recently announced his move to the EFF, congratulated the former president’s move as part of a growing leftist movement in the country.
“It is my ardent hope that President Zuma will contribute to forging unity between all the forces of the progressive left,” Niehaus said.
While the ANC has threatened to seek possible legal recourse, with ANC SG Fikile Mbalula saying allowing the formation to run for elections with the name of MK was a sheer disregard of the party’s history.
“UMkhonto weSizwe belongs to the ANC. If you want to form a party, you can go, but leave MK with us. We are going to challenge them,” Mbalula said.
DA Shadow Minister for Trade and Industry Dean Macpherson said that despite President Cyril Ramaphosa’s reputation as a negotiator and strategist, the recent announcement has completely outmaneuvered the president with potentially important consequences for the ruling party’s attempt at renewal.
“Cyril Ramaphosa has spent nearly six years trying to appease Jacob Zuma, including letting him out of jail twice, only to be told by Zuma he won’t vote for Ramaphosa’s ANC,” Macpherson said.
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