South Africa’s ANC Slams Reports of Bid to Oust Ramaphosa

(Bloomberg) --

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress pledged its full backing for President Cyril Ramaphosa and dismissed reports of a plot by a party faction to oust him as fabricated.

“We are a collective, united leadership,” ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule told reporters in Johannesburg on Wednesday after a two-day meeting of the party’s national executive committee. “We don’t know what the papers are talking about.”

A Dec. 9 report in the Citizen newspaper cited unidentified people as saying Magashule was leading a campaign to discredit Ramaphosa over economic policies that his opponents argue are supplanting the ANC’s pro-poor stance. The president’s adversaries want him replaced by his deputy, David Mabuza, with either Magashule or Water Minister Lindiwe Sisulu as second in command, the Johannesburg-based newspaper said.

There have been several reports of plots to topple the president since he won control of the ANC by a razor-thin margin in late 2017, but there’s been no concrete evidence that his authority is under immediate threat.

While some of the reports have speculated that an ouster bid could materialize when 3,000 ANC members convene for the party’s national general council in late June next year, Magashule said the gathering wasn’t an elective conference and its purpose was to review whether policy adjustments were necessary.

“It’s not about removal of President Ramaphosa or the secretary-general,” Magashule said. “I think that is the wish of some people to divide and entrench division in the ANC. Collectively we have agreed that we should never allow that to happen.”

A former labor union leader and one of the richest black South Africans, Ramaphosa, 67, took office in February last year after the ANC forced Jacob Zuma to step down following a scandal-marred rule that lasted almost nine years and eroded the party’s electoral support. Ramaphosa has faced an uphill battle to turn around the economy, tackle a 29% unemployment rate and fix state companies that have been plagued by graft.

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