Aides of Jacob Zuma have drawn up contingency plans to try to force his rival President Thabo Mbeki out of office early, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Friday.
If Zuma was elected party leader at the African National Congress’s five-yearly conference in a fortnight, he would insist on being privy to big government decisions, according to a close adviser, the influential daily said.
If Mbeki opposed such cooperation, he would face a no-confidence vote that could lead to his eviction from office, a businessman close to Zuma told the paper.
Hardliners in Zuma’s circle have long made clear privately they would push to end Mbeki’s second presidential term prematurely, the newspaper said.
To unseat Mbeki would require either a majority of all 400 MPs in Parliament supporting a vote of no confidence, or else a vote by MPs to dissolve Parliament, triggering national elections, the Financial Times reported.
The ANC has nearly three-quarters of Parliament’s 400 seats. Several of the small opposition parties have said they would oppose a no-confidence vote, but Zuma has in recent months wooed the Freedom Front with a view, one source close to him said, to gaining their support for a no-confidence motion.
Mbeki, who has been campaigning for a third term as head of the ANC, partly, it is widely assumed, to stop Zuma getting the post, is not due to step down from office until the next elections, scheduled for mid-2009, the FT said.
As ANC leader, Zuma would be SA’s likely next president given the party’s huge electoral dominance.
”Business people broadly accept Mr Zuma’s pledges that he would not shift policy to the left but fear there could be up to 18 months of paralysis in government while Mr Mbeki and Mr Zuma occupy competing centres of power, one as head of government and the other as head of the ruling party,” the report said.
With Zuma facing the threat of being charged for corruption relating to a multibillion-rand arms deal, his supporters are keen that he take control of government as soon as possible.
”There will be no concerted effort to remove Mr Mbeki from office,” one of Zuma’s top advisers told the FT.
”But any major government initiative would require high-level consultation [with Zuma].”
If there were no cooperation, the aide added, and if there were ”abuses of power, we would understand that to make life unbearable for Mr Mbeki could be convenient”.
Senior members of the ANC are aghast at the idea of a showdown over the presidency and are urging both camps to hold ”peace” talks, the paper said.
Frank Chikane, one of Mbeki’s senior aides, dismissed the idea of an early end to Mbeki’s term, citing the 18 months in the late 1990s when Mbeki was ANC leader and Nelson Mandela was the country’s president.
”But the analogy is widely seen as flawed given that Mr Mbeki’s succession was uncontested,” the Financial Times pointed out.
In possibly a more accurate assessment of the stakes, Mbeki cautioned against revenge after the succession battle was over.
”The people who might be opposing one another in those contests must not see themselves as enemies [afterwards],” he said in an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
Chikane told the Financial Times he believed that Zuma was ”shrewd
enough that he will not create a situation where there is instability, because he knows the people will turn against him”.
But Zuma’s aides were confident his supporters would not change their minds.
His return from the brink of political oblivion was facilitated by the unions and the left, who stood by him when he was fired as the country’s deputy president in 2005 after his financial adviser was convicted of corruption, the report said.
According to the Financial Times, Zuma has spent the past 10 days overseas, seeking to reassure investors about his policies. – Sapa