ROAD TO ANC's DECEMBER CONFERENCE
Daughter signalled Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s presidential campaign launch on WhatsApp groups
Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma will run against her boss, President Cyril Ramaphosa, as Phala Phala weakens his hand.
A few weeks ago, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s youngest daughter, Thuthukile Zuma, started posting social media posters of her mother’s bid for the ANC’s top job.
The well-designed posters announced Dlamini Zuma’s campaign ahead of its confirmation in the Sunday Times on 11 September. In 2017, Dlamini Zuma was narrowly beaten to the position of ANC president by just 179 votes — by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Thuthukile Zuma is an influential youth activist on the ANC Youth League Task Team. The daughter of former President Jacob Zuma and Dlamini Zuma, she is a feminist who spoke out last month against Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana after he was alleged to have sexually assaulted a masseuse.
Dlamini Zuma confirmed to the Sunday Times, via her spokesperson Lungi Mtshali, that she has been nominated for the position by ANC branches and is available to accept. That means it is game on in the ANC race for the presidency in December as the nomination window opened this week.
Her daughter first signalled Dlamini Zuma’s entry into the race when she posted campaign flyers on WhatsApp groups early in September.
Chat group hands up for NDZ – Graphic Jocelyn Adamson
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The ANC race is happening in WhatsApp groups, with some action on Twitter and Facebook. Social media is now the principal place where the contestation will happen, signalling the end of rallies and meetings as the leading indicators of how campaigns are progressing.
Thuthukile Zuma referred Daily Maverick to Mtshali, who did not respond to Daily Maverick’s call for comment. She denied “announcing” her mom’s candidature.
It is unknown whether Dlamini Zuma will run as the RET-faction candidate or whether she will put distance between it and her agenda, which is to fight on a “Womandla” or woman’s ticket.
For more than 100 years, the ANC has never had a female leader, and the lobby to accelerate women’s leadership is growing. But the RET faction does not have a credible leader to run against Ramaphosa in December and may put its weight behind her. The ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial spokesperson did not respond to a Daily Maverick call for comment.
Ramaphosa has been weakened by the 2020 Phala Phala theft of game sale funds from a sofa they had been sewn into at his farm. It now turns out that the cash was hidden at the farm for much longer than the single weekend Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya first claimed in June.
Former spy boss Arthur Fraser set the cat among Ramaphosa’s pigeons in June when he laid a criminal complaint against the President for not disclosing the theft. The case has raised red flags for money laundering, foreign exchange regulation violations and tax evasion.
The issue has grown into a scandal, especially after a successful judgment for Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane against Ramaphosa on Friday, 9 September. He had suspended Mkhwebane after she sent him questions about Phala Phala.
The State Capture Commission confirmed that State Security Agency funds and police spending were misused in the ANC presidential race in 2017.
Dlamini Zuma is popular in the ANC but not outside it, where her disciplinarian style during Covid-19 was repeatedly turned into memes. As minister of cooperative governance, she was responsible for regulating the state of disaster during the pandemic. DM
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Can the ANC get any worse??? Quite terrifying.
This country needs a president, whether male or female, who’s got integrity, is passionate about SERVING, has tons of energy and is a nation builder. All these traits are in very short supply with the sitting president and non-existent with Dlamini Zuma.
Agree
Mourning ‘THE BELOVED COUNTRY’. NDZ as President like living in the old East Germany.
The notion that some leaders in the ANC are clean is a false narrative of the media because all the leaders are surrounded by very corrupt elements who ought to be in orange overalls. Cyril has many people with sleaze around him and some Zondo has asked him to fire them and to date he has not. The question raised by Zondo that parliament will not be able to protect the country if another bout of state capture came around. This does not only speaks volumes about Cyril but the entire ANC. The Chief Justice was effectively saying that the ANC is not prepared to fight corruption and protect the country from criminality but would be part of the orgy of corruption. This is a very serious indictment on Cyril and the entire ANC. The question that arises is whether there is a better choice amongst ANC leaders on dealing with the issues confronting our country and Cyril has proven to be a non – choice except for those who want to have their turn at the feeding trough. We need to mobilise civil society, carry out civic education on citizen responsibilities and build an active citizenry and that will
be the bulwark against corruption. To seek to find difference amongst ANC leaders is to look for a needle in a haystack. What perhaps confronts the country is the voodoo economic NDZ was proposing during her 2017 campaign and the non – action of the current President. Fear of the return of Nomvula and others is misplaced because all of them including Baleka Mbethe, Jeff Radebe are back!
Cunningham, it is too late to expect the current anc regime to honour the Constitution and anc manifesto that was done so many years ago and then lead this country to greater heights, it is over !!!!!
The passing of Time will continue to cover the destruction and devastation the ANC has brought down on the people of South Africa.
” Let us not ask ourselves what we can do for this country ”~ so its every man, woman the LGBTQ+2+6, binary and non-binary plus all the others, to take to the hills.
Get out the oxwagons and trek to the north, south, east and west.
Please do not give the Zuma offspring the oxygen of publicity.
I could not agree more