The ANC’s ability to peacefully ease out an obstinate Jacob Zuma from office and immediately get its party leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, elected as President by Parliament shows the pre-eminence of the party and the robustness of South African institutions.
This should be a key lesson to other African polities like Nigeria and Kenya, whose politics are based on individuals rather than the party supremacy.
The party’s moral and political authority has been badly damaged by the corruption-marred Zuma administration, and the ANC was determined to get rid of Zuma to allow new leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, quickly begin his promised reforms of revamping the economy, clamping down on corruption and rebuilding the party’s image ahead of elections in 2019.
This is very much unlike the situation in Nigeria where the president usually has a stranglehold over the party creating a situation where the party exists to do the will of the president instead of president toeing the line of the party. Political analysts have criticised Nigerian political parties as having no ideology.
On Tuesday, 14 February, the ANC decided to recall Zuma after negotiations to get him to relinquish power quietly failed. Zuma refused to resign and the party ordered the parliament to initiate a vote of no confidence on him by Thursday if he failed to resign by Wednesday. An obstinate Zuma in an interview with the state broadcaster, SABC, shortly after said he’s done nothing wrong and saw no reason to resign.
Hours after, he saw the futility of his position and threw in the towel.
“No life should be lost in my name and also the ANC should never be divided in my name. I have therefore come to the decision to resign as president of the republic with immediate effect, even though I disagree with the decision of the leadership of my organisation” he announced at the end of a lengthy television address to the nation.
“I have always been a disciplined member of the ANC. As I leave I will continue to serve the people of South Africa as well as the ANC, the organisation I have served all my life” he said.
The parliament proceeded on Thursday to elect the deputy president and new ANC leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, the fifth post-apartheid South African president. In his address to the nation, the 65-year old lawyer, unionist and businessman vowed to “improve the lives of the people”. He also addressed one of the most sensitive topics in South Africa today telling parliament that corruption and state capture were “on our radar screen”.
Ramaphosa, rumoured to be Mandela’s preferred choice to succeed him, was so disappointed he was overlooked in favour of Thabo Mbeki that he left politics altogether to concentrate on business, rising to become one of the richest men in South Africa.
He is now due to deliver the State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Friday, postponed last week due to uncertainty about who should deliver it and Zuma’s reluctance to step down.
This is the second time the ANC, Africa’s oldest and most cohesive political party, formed in 1912 to fight white minority rule, is recalling the president of the republic. In 2008, the ANC under the leadership of Jacob Zuma also forced then president, Thabo Mbeki, to resign following struggles for control of the party.
The South African political processes diverge greatly with those of Nigeria and Kenya, for example, where political parties are weak and serves only as vehicles for capturing power. In Kenya, for instance, new parties are formed every election circle and withers away after the elections. In Nigeria, new parties spring up always and both elected government officials and candidates traverse parties in search of structures to contest elections. Politics in these entities are based on personalities and not on parties thus making it difficult to rein in recalcitrant politicians and elected officials like was the case in South Africa and even Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, the markets appeared to welcome the emergence of Cyril Ramaphosa as president as the country’s currency, the rand, reached its strongest level in three years at 11.6570 rand for $1 in early trading on Thursday, February 15 2018 against its lowest in January 2015.
The power switch has cheered investors with the Rand, which was already one of the world’s best performing currencies over the past three months, rising 0.4 per cent to 11.6667 per dollar as of 3:53pm on Thursday in Johannesburg, while the yield that will mature on the nation’s 2026 local-currency bonds fell to the lowest level in more than two years.
“It is quite possible that the Dollar will weaken to below 11 against the Rand for the first time since December 2014 over the coming weeks; and has strengthened against all of the G-10 currencies throughout the same period,” Jameel Ahmad, Global Head of Currency Strategy & Market Research at FXTM said.
Ahmad added, “While on-going Dollar weakness across the currency markets has supported gains in the Rand, the fact that it has managed to also advance against the G10 currencies suggests that the confirmation of Zuma vacating his position has benefited overall investor sentiment towards South Africa.”
Stocks also rallied, sending the price-to-estimated earnings multiple of the FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index above MSCI’s gauge of world stocks for the first time since 2016 on the back of a successful election analyst said.
South Africa’s economy have being battered by low growth rates and dwindling investor confidence compounded by S&P Global Ratings which cut South Africa’s local-currency debt score in November 2017.
Also, Moody’s Investors Service threatened to slash its ranking to the same level, raising the risk of a selloff from global indexes and the country’s unemployment rate which is currently at almost 30 per cent, a rate which rises to nearly 40 per cent for young people.
“The Zuma presidency was masked by multiple layers of political risk; confirmation of Zuma stepping aside should help the Rand continue to climb to levels not seen since the days of the Federal Reserve preparing the financial markets for the normalization of US interest rate policies,” Ahmad concluded.
Growth has averaged just 1.6 per cent a year since Zuma took office in 2009, undermined partly by a series of policy missteps and inappropriate appointments that rocked investor and business confidence. However, Ramaphosa has pledged to restore fiscal responsibility and root out corruption and mismanagement.
South Africa situation adds to a continuing trend on the continent of peaceful transition so far, which started from Zimbabwe, although, it was a little bit complicated, as it had to take a military motivation to help with the transition.
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