As the chorus of calls for President Jacob Zuma to step down continues to grow, both within African National Congress ranks and in civil society groups, the ruling party’s caucus again saved Zuma from a motion of no confidence vote in Parliament on Thursday.
The motion was delayed at first as a fractious debate ensued when opposition MPs called for a secret ballot so ANC MPs could vote with their conscience without facing consequences from the ruling party.
United Democratic Movement (UDM) MP Nqabayomzi Kwankwa remarked: “It actually has to do with the fact that we are trying to save you [ANC] guys.”
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP Hlengiwe Hlope wanted to know “what is so difficult about a secret ballot if you are so sure about your numbers?”
After several pleas from opposition parties, deputy speaker Lechesa Tsenoli, amid loud howling from both sides of the political divide, and various failed attempts to get MPs to obey his orders, ruled the debate would go ahead and that the matter of a secret vote should be taken to Parliament’s rules committee for deliberation.
Opening the spirited debate on the motion, which was watched by dozens in the public gallery, including ANC supporters and many opposition supporters in blue t-shirts bearing the words “#Zuma or SA”, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane called on his political rivals across the House floor to put the needs of South Africans ahead of one man.
“I am asking you to take South Africa’s side today, to put your country first,” said Maimane.
He asked MPs to put their political differences aside and do what South Africans who voted for them wanted.
“Today we have an opportunity to say to the people of South Africa, that you the people of South Africa matter more than the politicians. We have the chance to say that as Team SA we want the best for South Africa, a South Africa free from poverty, a South Africa free from unemployment…a country that treats its job creators as heroes, a country that says to the world that we are open for business…”
“We can choose between Mr Zuma or we can choose South Africa. That is the choice each of us has to make today,” he said.
If ANC MPs voted in favour of keeping Zuma as president, Maimane said they would live with the dire consequences.
“We can choose to sit back while our state is captured by the greedy and the corrupt, or we can stand up against state capture,” he said.
“We can choose to elevate one man above the law, or we can fight for every person to be equal before the law.”
Two ANC ministers took to the podium to defend their president, saying the motion was an attempt to protect the economic interests of the country’s white minority.
Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said the real reason for the fifth such vote in four years was “the commercial power of the minority” and the continued enslavement of the country’s majority, who were historically kept as a political underclass and abused as beasts of burden, in poverty.
“The fight today, as it was in the past and will be tomorrow, is not about the person of President Jacob Zuma but it is ultimately about the economic riches of this country.”
He echoed Water Affairs and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane’s comment that the DA “aims to keep intact apartheid economic realities”.
She has also charged that the DA was “using a black face to protect the interests of the white minority”, sending DA chief whip John Steenhuisen to his feet to object to the slur on Maimane.
Gigaba said the ANC welcomed former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s report on allegations of improper ties between the executive and the Gupta family released last week, but it had to be noted that the 355-page document had delivered no conclusive findings of guilt on the part of anybody.
He also reiterated the ANC National Working Committee’s view that while the ANC supported her recommendation of appointing a commission of inquiry to take the investigation further, it should be established in line with the Constitution.
This is a reference to the position taken this week by ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe after the party’s national working committee met, that it was the prerogative of the president to appoint a judge to head the commission. Madonsela had stipulated that the judge must be appointed not by Zuma but by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, a directive Mantashe suggested should be reviewed by the courts.
Both Gigaba and Mokonyane added footnotes referring to the ANC’s current internal divisions and recent set-backs, the former saying: “What we do not do right we are prepared to correct.”
Mokonyane in her speech said the party was “on a path of self-correction and renewal”.
Gigaba suggested that instead of bringing the motion — the fifth of its kind against Zuma since 2012 — the DA should have “waited patiently for the commission of inquiry”.
Instead, he said, it was trying to exploit the state capture report to seek to gain political power to have control of the country’s economic wealth.
Madonsela found that Zuma may have breached the Executive Members Ethics Act by failing to act on indications that the state was being used to further the business interests of the Gupta family.
While the two ministers sought to pledge their loyalty to Zuma by attacking the opposition, EFF chief whip Floyd Shivambu delivered a hard-hitting speech in which he likened Zuma to Africa’s most despotic rulers.
Shivambu described Zuma as a “post-colonial disaster”, comparing him to Uganda’s Idi Amin, Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, and Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), who the EFF leader said used their positions as heads of state for financial self-benefit.
“They seek to enrich their families. They seek to undermine the rule of law. They have no regard of the Constitution. They prosecute and persecute political opponents, including of the political parties that they come from…and when everything else has failed, they kill, they assassinate their political opponents. That’s what we are faced with here in South Africa of a political post-colonial disaster called Mr Jacob Zuma.”
Shivambu conceded the opposition would lose the vote, but implored his former comrades in the ANC to use their internal structures to remove Zuma from office.
“Create your own platforms to remove the post-colonial disaster that is facing South Africa because before you know it he would have captured everyone else. After he has dealt with everyone else he is going to arrest all of you, he is going to lock you up, he’s going to kill you…because he knows if he doesn’t have political power he’s going to prison…”
Veteran politician, Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who has survived four post-democratic presidents, expressed distress at thee acrimonious nature of the debate.
“A house divided cannot stand. It really distresses me that we are so disagreeable and acrimonious unnecessarily,” but he criticised Zuma for failing to heed the call to quit when those calls came from not only academics, religious leaders and NGO’s, but from all corners of the country.
Ignoring calls to resign from ANC stalwarts who had fought and suffered for the freedoms South Africans today enjoyed was “an act of unimaginable obstinance”, said Buthelezi.
“Thus, a movement [ANC] that has stood for 104 years has crumbled and is taking South Africa with it all for the sake of one man,” said Buthelezi, adding that is the ANC falls the entire African continent would suffer a blow.
“We have seen the evidence of fallen dynasties and foreign empires. Must we watch it happen to Africa’s oldest liberation movement.”
UDM leader Bantu Holomisa said the time had come for the ANC to rid itself of a “monumentally flawed president”.
“However, the ruling clique on this side of the House is behaving like wolves, screaming in unison to defend one of their’s at the expense of the country. They are showing South Africans a middle finger,” he said.
As ANC MPs howled and mocked him, he retorted: “Look at them they are jumping from their chairs like popcorn.”
After the matter was put to a vote it was easily defeated with 214 of the ANC’s 249 MPs saying no to the motion, with 126 MPs voting yes. There was one abstention. Tsenoli announced 58 MPs did not vote at all – but did not specify whether it was because they were not present in the House or chose not to participate.
There are 249 ANC MPs in the National Assembly, 89 DA MPs, 25 EFF MPs, 10 IFP MPs, 6 National Freedom Party (NFP) MPs, four UDM MPs, four Freedom Front Plus MPs, three Congress of the People MPs, three African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) MPs, three African Independent Congress (AIC) MPs, two Agang SA MPs, one Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) MP and one African People’s Convention (APC) MP.
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