Former South African leader Jacob Zuma has declared that he will not vote for the political party of the incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa, African National Congress (ANC).
Zuma, who is now seeking to form a new party towards the forthcoming presidential elections, led South Africa between 2009 and 2018.
“I cannot and will not campaign for the ANC of Ramaphosa”. He was quoted saying.
Jacob Zuma said it “would be a betrayal” to campaign for the ruling political party.
The name of Zuma’s new party, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), translates to “spear of the nation” and is the same as the name of the ANC’s old armed wing.
In a provocative statement, he said: “The new people’s war starts today. The only crucial difference is instead of the bullet this time we will use the ballot.”
Mr. Zuma was a member of the paramilitary MK, which opposed the South African government during the apartheid era.
It was legally dissolved in 1993, before the democratic elections that saw Nelson Mandela’s ANC win the presidency.
Zuma made the statement at a news conference in Soweto, but had one of his daughters read a statement on his behalf after her said he was not well enough to speak at length.
According to the statement, the ANC was “one of the great liberation movements of our time”, but added that it “truly saddens me that the ANC of today is not the once great movement that we loved and were prepared to lay down our lives for”.
“I will die a member of the ANC,” Zuma said, but was quick to add that it had “changed into an organisation we no longer recognise”.
The former president said some leaders were acting in an “un-ANC manner” and he plans to “rescue” the organisation.
He alluded to a “deliberate plot to kill the ANC” and stated that the ANC was predicted to lose the elections the next year.
Zuma called the incumbent government a failure.
He said President Ramaphosa was a “proxy of white monopoly capital” and that the “ANC of Ramaphosa has declared war against black professionals and intellectuals”.