South Africa’s Zuma acknowledges historic election losses
South African President Jacob Zuma, reeling from
historic losses in local elections, at the weekend that
voters “are sending out messages all around” and
that his ruling African National Congress (ANC) was
“going to listen very, very carefully.”
Zuma spoke as vote tallies showed the ANC losing
control of the capital, Pretoria, and its majority in
the country’s largest city and economic centre,
Johannesburg.
According to VOA, the party of Nelson Mandela
already had conceded defeat on Friday in Port
Elizabeth, losing the key battleground in
Wednesday’s municipal elections by nearly seven
percentage points.
In the metropolitan area that includes Pretoria, the
opposition Democratic Alliance Party won 43.1 per
cent of the vote while the ANC finished with 41.2
per cent.
Surveys showed the ANC leading nationally with 54
per cent of the vote. But that was scant comfort to
ANC leaders as vote tallies on Saturday in
Johannesburg showed the ruling party falling below
an outright majority and in need of political allies to
retain control of the city.
Zuma has been plagued by political scandal since
taking office seven years ago. In one instance, he
was found to have used $500,000 of public money to
renovate his private home. The country’s
Constitutional Court has ordered him to repay that
sum.
During his rule, unemployment has risen to 27
percent, and economic analysts are predicting zero
growth in the country’s gross domestic product for
2016.
As Zuma spoke on Saturday on national television,
four women stood in front of him, carrying signs
apparently referring to his acquittal on rape
charges in 2006, three years before taking office.
protest.
The Democratic Alliance already runs South Africa’s
second-largest city, Cape Town. Party leader, Mmusi
Maimane, told VOA that the ANC “for far too long
had governed South Africa with absolute impunity.”
He also warned that the campaign for the
presidency in 2019 “starts now.”
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