President Zuma faces Secret Ballot at Last

SOUTH AFRICA - In Brief 07 Aug 2017 by Iraj Abedian

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Tomorrow, Aug 8th, 2017 is already hard-coded in the annals of SA democratic history for the first ever secret Vote of No Confidence against President Zuma. An hour ago, the Speaker of Parliament announced a historic decision in favour of the 'secret ballot' option- some would say because the Constitutional Court Judgement on the matter left her with little wiggle room. The country is abuzz with excitement and disbelief! The rand is also rallying in anticipation. Almost all political commentators expected a different decision from Baleka Mbete, the Speaker of the Parliament. She has left her decision to very late in the day, leaving little campaign room for the anti-Zuma ANC MPs to mobilize! However, the pressure is on from both within the ANC and from within the broader society for the ANC MPs to do the patriotic thing and push Zuma out. In terms of the arithmetic of the MPs, assuming that all opposition party MPs vote against Zuma, the opposition parties require 50 ANC MPs to vote against Zuma to force him out of the presidency of the country, although he would still remain the ANC president at least until December 2017. Therein lies the ANC MP's dilemma. If Zuma is voted out as the SA president tomorrow, the Speaker of the Parliament will take charge of the national administration for 30 days, when the Parliament has to convene and elect a new President for the period running up to the 2019 elections. However, with Zuma still at the presidency of the ANC, he and his supporters will have a lot of power to nominate their preferred candidate to succeed Zuma. It is highly unlikely that they would support the nomination of Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, who is currently the deputy ...