PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma was booed on Thursday as calls for him to step down mounted within the African National Congress (ANC).But there are indications that party officials will stick by him and are preparing to reach out to branches to manage the fallout.
Mr Zuma was booed at Sammy Marks Square in Pretoria as he left a debate of the National House of Traditional Leaders.
A group of young people and commuters taunted him as he made his way to his official vehicle. Another group sought to counter the jeering with cheers, but they were drowned out.
Earlier, a group of children of ANC exiles wrote a letter to the party, calling for action against Mr Zuma for flouting the country’s Constitution and the party’s moral and disciplinary code. Their memorandum, which was signed by 42 people, calls for a special conference at which fresh party elections would be held.
It said Mr Zuma showed no remorse for the Nkandla debacle.
The signatories call themselves Masupatsela or “young pioneers” of the 1980s. They include the grandchildren of the late ANC stalwart Walter Sisulu.
“We are extremely unsettled by his disingenuous and contradictory assertion that he had always been willing to pay for the nonsecurity features at Nkandla,” their memorandum reads.
Their move comes as lobbying inside and outside the party is intensifying for the ANC to take action against Mr Zuma. Former generals of the ANC’s military wing, uMkhonto weSizwe submitted a memorandum last month, calling for leadership change.
But the ANC’s senior structures have defended Mr Zuma, with some warning that removing him could lead to a split like the one that followed the recall of former president Thabo Mbeki in 2008.
The young pioneers’ memorandum states that Mr Zuma’s apology on Friday night was insufficient.
“The press conference that was held by our president after the judgment was handed down was also deeply unsettling, as he extended no apology for the abuse of public funds for his personal benefit,” it says.
“We are particularly perturbed by the developments within our movement, which appear to demonstrate a conflation of loyalty to our revolutionary cause with loyalty to individuals, at the expense of the integrity and moral standing of our movement. The president acted illegally in failing to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the land and demonstrated scant regard for the remedial action taken against him by the public protector in terms of her constitutional powers.”
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said on Thursday that he had not yet received the memorandum.
Senior ANC members, its Sefako Makgatho branch, business leaders and a coalition of civil society organisations this week called for Mr Zuma to step down or be recalled.
But on Thursday Mr Zuma appeared unfazed at two public engagements.
During the debate in the National House of Traditional Leaders, Mr Zuma appeared calm and collected. He spoke off the cuff as he responded to concerns raised by traditional leaders, giving only a slight hint of his views after the furore prompted by the Constitutional Court finding.
Addressing concerns raised about certain laws, Mr Zuma said: “I would be very happy to have African solutions to African problems.
“Legal people say they deal with cold hard facts, they are cold, not very warm. And I then said but they are dealing with warm bodies.”
He also appeared cautious when responding to a question on poverty, saying he should not “talk too much” as he might say things “he did not intend to”. In a lengthy response to a question on nation building, in a sombre tone, he asked how SA got to this point.
“We need to correct and collectively identify things to be promoted, the kind of values we need … and look back at what made us what we were … what can we do to restore dignity to ourselves,” he said.
Ahead of the debate, he launched the “E-Home Affairs” project in Midrand and declared an official funeral for former Robben Island prisoner and former president of the Pan African Congress Clarence Makwetu.
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