Zuma expressed full confidence in his own leadership. “I am fit and I am doing it very well
President Jacob Zuma has suggested that money may have been used to bribe ANC MPs into voting with the opposition in the eighth failed motion of no confidence against him.
“I can tell you, they spent a lot of money. And I’m happy for those who took the money, children will eat,” the president said in front of a few hundred people just outside the parliamentary precinct in Cape Town’s city centre.
“If they give you money, take it, pay for the schools and vote right. That is the principle.”
Zuma arrived to celebration and cheers of his name after he narrowly survived a motion of no confidence against him in the National Assembly on Tuesday night.
The motion, brought by the Democratic Alliance, was defeated with 198 votes against and 177 votes for. The result marked the first time in South Africa’s democratic era that 26 of the governing party’s MPs voted with the opposition to oust their own president.
The ANC celebrated the outcome but so did opposition parties, that said the result showed that there are ANC members who require the protection of a secret ballot to show their discontent with Zuma.
Outside the parliamentary precinct, Zuma thanked the ANC MPs who helped keep him in power and the crowd of people who were camped outside parliament throughout the day.
“Thank you to the comrades who mobilised you to come and give support to those who are inside parliament who were supposed to vote,” he said.