JOHANNESBURG: Efforts by South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) to unseat President Jacob Zuma tilted toward the endgame on Wednesday as the speaker of parliament said party leader Cyril Ramaphosa would outline Zuma’s fate imminently.
Zuma, in power since 2009, has been in a weakened position since Deputy President Ramaphosa replaced him as ANC leader in December.
The ANC had scheduled an urgent meeting of its national executive on Wednesday evening to discuss Zuma’s future but postponed it late on Tuesday after “constructive” talks between Zuma and Ramaphosa.
The delay increased speculation that a deal for Zuma to resign had been ironed out. Times Live, an online news service, quoted sources as saying Zuma would resign as soon as a list of preconditions had been finalized.
Speaker Baleka Mbete suggested South Africans would learn of Zuma’s fate within hours.
“In this day there will be some progress which the president of the ANC will be ready to come back to us about,” she told the eNCA television channel.
Zuma’s spokesman declined to comment.
Zuma engineered the ouster of former president Thabo Mbeki in 2008 shortly after taking over the helm of the ANC. He has not said whether he will resign voluntarily before his second term as president ends next year.
The 75-year-old has been South Africa’s most controversial president since the end of white-minority rule in 1994, overseeing a tumultuous nine years marked by economic decline and numerous allegations of corruption.
Some within the ANC and the opposition say the Gupta family, friends of Zuma, have used their links with the president to influence cabinet appointments and win state tenders.
The Guptas and Zuma have denied any wrongdoing but the allegations are the focus of a judicial enquiry.
Endgame looms for South Africa’s Jacob Zuma
Endgame looms for South Africa’s Jacob Zuma
Australian far-right senator censured over ‘inflammatory’ Muslim comments
- The motion called on the Senate to censure Hanson for her “inflammatory and divisive comments seeking to vilify Muslim Australians, which do not reflect the opinions of the Australian Senate or the Australian people”
SYDNEY: Australia’s Senate on Monday censured far-right lawmaker Pauline Hanson over “inflammatory and divisive” comments she made about Muslim people during a discussion about the possible return of Australian relatives of Daesh militants from Syria.
“They hate Westerners, and that’s what it’s all about. You say there’s great Muslims out there, well I’m sorry, how can you tell me there are good Muslims?” Hanson said in an interview with Sky News in February.
Penny Wong, leader of Australia’s center-left Labor government in the Senate, moved the censure motion against Hanson, who leads the anti-immigration One Nation party.
The motion called on the Senate to censure Hanson for her “inflammatory and divisive comments seeking to vilify Muslim Australians, which do not reflect the opinions of the Australian Senate or the Australian people.”
It passed with the support of the minor Greens party and two senators from the conservative Liberal party who crossed the floor. “This censure motion is about drawing a line and sending a message to the people of faith in this country and sending a message to children in this country that your leaders believe that condemning an entire religion is not acceptable,” Wong said. Hanson called the motion a “stunt” before storming out of the chamber.
A senator for Queensland, Hanson first rose to prominence in the 1990s because of her strident opposition to immigration from Asia and to
asylum seekers.
Recent opinion polling shows Hanson’s One Nation has overtaken the country’s conservative opposition coalition, with 28 percent of the primary vote amid rising support for anti-immigration policies.
