Zuma Puts Down Party Revolt

South Africa’s notoriously corrupt President Jacob Zuma has quelled a second revolt from his party’s leadership, cementing his hold over the ANC ahead of party leadership elections later this year. Financial Times: 

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress sought to close ranks around President Jacob Zuma on Monday, a day after he quashed an attempt by senior party members to remove him as head of state.

Mr Zuma’s allies easily rebuffed calls for him to step down at a meeting of the ANC’s National Executive Committee over the weekend. But it was the second time in six months that his scandal-prone leadership had been challenged, underlining the deepening fractures in the former liberation movement. […]

“It’s very clear that Zuma has reached the point of no return, and he will go all the way” in putting his survival over the interests of the party, said Prince Mashele, an analyst at the Centre for Politics and Research in Pretoria.

Predictably enough, the rand slumped soon after it became clear that Zuma would survive the leadership challenge. And that gloomy outlook is more than warranted: the steady decline of the ANC threatens both South Africa’s democracy and its prosperity. The spread of corruption and patronage politics will weaken investment and degrade the capacity of state institutions—and those hardest hit, as usual, will be the poor and the voiceless.

The ANC’s next major test comes at December’s party conference, when members will choose a new party leader. That contest will pit Zuma’s ex-wife and preferred successor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, against Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president who has lately become a vocal critic of his boss. Unfortunately, all the early signs suggest that the pro-Zuma factions will prevail—and that his legacy of cronyism and corruption will outlast his time in office.