JOHANNESBURG, 16 Dec: Former President Jacob Zuma on Saturday denounced the governing African National Congress party and announced that he would vote for a newly-formed political formation in South Africa\u2019s general election next year.
\nZuma, who was president of the ANC from 2007 to 2017, said that he\u2019s backing the newly-formed Umkhonto we Sizwe party that is named after the ANC\u2019s now-defunct military wing, which was disbanded after the liberation struggle.
\nZuma called on other South Africans to vote for the new formation, saying it would be \u201ca betrayal to vote for the ANC\u201d of President Cyril Ramaphosa.
\nThe country\u2019s general election scheduled for 2024 is expected to be highly contested, because the ruling ANC, which has governed the country since Nelson Mandela became South Africa\u2019s first democratically-elected leader in 1994, faces a myriad of challenges.
\nRecent polls have suggested that the ANC could for the first time garner less than 50% of the national vote in next year\u2019s election and may need to form a coalition government to remain in power.
\nBriefing journalists in Johannesburg\u2019s Soweto township on Saturday, Zuma described the ANC and Ramaphosa as a \u201cproxy for white monopoly capital,\u201d and he described his decision as part of rescuing the ANC.
\n\u201cI have decided that I cannot and will not campaign for the ANC of Ramaphosa in 2024. My conscience will not allow me to lie to the people of South Africa and to pretend that the ANC of Ramaphosa is the ANC of Luthuli, Tambo and Mandela,\u201d said Zuma, referring to previous leaders of the ANC.
\nZuma was ousted as the country\u2019s president by Ramaphosa in 2018 amid wide-ranging allegations of corruption in government and state-owned companies during his presidential tenure from 2009 to 2018.
\nSince his departure from the country\u2019s highest office, Zuma has been facing legal battles. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JOHANNESBURG, 16 Dec: Former President Jacob Zuma on Saturday denounced the governing African National Congress party and announced that he would vote for a newly-formed political formation in South Africa\u2019s general election next year. Zuma, who was president of the ANC from 2007 to 2017, said that he\u2019s backing the newly-formed Umkhonto we Sizwe party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-230787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}