Cyril RAMAPHOSA vowed to address corruption yesterday as he was voted in by Parliament as South Africa’s new president, after the scandal-tainted reign of his predecessor Jacob Zuma.
The crisis provoked by allegations surrounding Mr Zuma took the African National Congress to its weakest point since taking power at the end of apartheid.
“I will try very hard not to disappoint the people of South Africa,” Mr Ramaphosa said in ending his speech to parliament shortly after it elected him. He said the issue of corruption is on “our radar screen”.
Mr Ramaphosa was the only candidate nominated for election after two opposition parties said they would not participate. The two parties instead unsuccessfully called for the dissolution of the National Assembly and early elections.
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng presided over the parliamentary election and congratulated Mr Ramaphosa, who had been Mr Zuma’s deputy and in December was narrowly elected leader of the ruling party over Mr Zuma’s ex-wife.
Mr Zuma resigned after years of scandals that damaged the reputation of the ruling ANC, which had instructed him this week to step down or face a parliamentary motion of no confidence that he would almost certainly lose.
Mr Ramaphosa is South Africa’sa fifth president since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994. Tonight, he is expected to deliver the state of the nation address that had been postponed during the ruling party’s days of closed-door negotiations to persuade Mr Zuma to resign.
As some South Africans cheered the end to Mr Zuma’s era, the rand strengthened against the dollar in early trading.
The country’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, will cooperate with Mr Ramaphosa if he acts in the interests of the South African people, said party leader Mmusi Maimane.
“We will hold you accountable and I will see you in 2019 on the ballot box,” he said.
Members of a smaller opposition party walked out of parliament before the election, saying the ANC plan to choose a new president was “illegitimate”.
Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, said ANC politicians had failed to hold Mr Zuma to account for alleged corruption and had therefore violated the constitution.
Mr Ramaphosa now faces the challenge reviving the reputation of the ANC, Africa’s most prominent liberation movement, which fought apartheid and has been in power since the first all-race elections in 1994. The party’s popularity fell as anger over corruption allegations grew and it suffered its worst showing at the polls in municipal elections in 2016.
Ramaphosa was the only candidate nominated for election in the parliament after the two opposition parties said they would not participate. The opposition parties instead unsuccessfully called for the dissolution of the National Assembly and early elections.
The foundation of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, welcomed Mr Zuma’s departure but said the state must act against “networks of criminality” that have hurt democracy.
As the country marks the centenary of Mandela’s 1918 birth, “there is a need to reckon with the failures of the democratic era,” the foundation said.
Mr Zuma, 75, may have gone but he he did not go willingly, as shown by the time it took the ANC to persuade him to resign.
“I’m being victimised here,” Zuma said, complaining that Mr Ramaphosa and other party leaders had not given him clear reasons why he should step down. Mr Zuma, 75, rose from poverty and no formal schooling to become South Africa’s president in 2009, following in the footsteps of Mr Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.
Despite anger over his numerous scandals, Mr Zuma remained popular in many rural strongholds. A member of the Zulu tribe, he is a traditionalist and a polygamist, who presently has four wives. He has been married six times and has 21 children.
Mr Zuma faced corruption allegations from an arms deal in 1999 that involved the government’s purchase of warships, submarines, fighter jets and helicopters.
He was also accused of accepting bribes from Thint Holdings, a French arms company in 2005, and was fired as deputy president that year over the incident.
In 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled that Mr Zuma had to pay back some of the £10 million of public funds that were used to upgrade his rural home in Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal. He has always denied any wrongdoing but his reputation was harmed by close links to the Gupta family. The Guptas moved to South Africa from India in 1993 and built up a large business empire.
When Atul Gupta arrived in to set up the family business Sahara Computers, he was amazed at the lack of red tape compared to India.
Sahara Group now has an annual turnover of about 200m rand (£14.3m) and employs some 10,000 people.
As well as computers, they have interests in mining, air travel, energy, technology and media. It also employed at least three members of the Zuma family leading to fears Mr Zuma was too close to the family.
The elite South African police unit, The Hawks, raided the Gupta family compound this week and several people have appeared in court on fraud charges. There are allegations state funds for poor farmers have been siphoned off into Gupta companies.
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