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Cape Town, South Africa | AFP | South Africans were facing political uncertainty on Wednesday after the ruling ANC party cancelled a meeting that could have removed embattled President Jacob Zuma from office.
Zuma is under growing pressure to resign in favour of his deputy and African National Congress party leader Cyril Ramaphosa, but local media have suggested Zuma is holding on for a favourable exit deal.
Parliament speaker Baleka Mbete told television broadcaster eNCA on Wednesday that Ramaphosa would soon give an update on the political turmoil.
“We can’t preempt what is going to happen and therefore we really still have to respect the fact that there are consultations between the two presidents,” she said.
Zuma and Ramaphosa have been holding talks in Cape Town about the president’s future that they described on Tuesday as “constructive”.
The announcement that the ANC’s national executive, which has the power to recall the scandal-tainted president, would not meet on Wednesday followed Tuesday’s dramatic cancellation of a key parliament speech by the president.
Zuma had been due to deliver the State of the Nation Address, which was scheduled for Thursday, and is the centrepiece of the political calendar, setting the government’s priorities for the year ahead.
After opposition pressure for a delay, the president agreed to postpone it, apparently fearing it would be disrupted by opposition lawmakers calling for his resignation.
The delay heightened speculation that Zuma could finally yield to calls to step down.
Many ANC members are pushing for Cyril Ramaphosa, the new head of the party since December, to replace Zuma, 75, as president immediately.
But Zuma loyalists have said that the serving president should complete his second and final term in office, which would end when elections are held next year.
“I can say to you that there are different views,” the party’s deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte said Tuesday.
Speaker Mbete told reporters that the State of the Nation address had been postponed because there was “little likelihood” that it would be held without disruption.
– ‘Agreement to go’? –
In previous years, opposition lawmakers have shouted Zuma down and been ejected from the chamber by security guards in a melee of flying fists.
“We thought that we needed to create room for establishing a much more conducive political atmosphere in parliament,” Mbete added, saying a new date would be announced shortly.
