CAPE TOWN // South African president Jacob Zuma faced a widening public backlash from senior members of the ruling African National Congress including his deputy, Cyril Ramaphosa, on Friday after firing his finance minister as part of sweeping cabinet changes announced overnight.
“I have made my views known and there are quite a number of other colleagues and comrades who are unhappy about the situation, particularly the removal of the minister of finance,” Mr Ramaphosa told South Africa’s public broadcaster.
Mr Gordhan, widely seen as a competent manager of one of the world’s most important emerging economies, was reportedly sacked because of an intelligence report that he was allegedly trying to undermine his government.
“For him to be removed for this type of reasoning is to me unacceptable,” Mr Ramaphosa said.
Mr Gordhan had been at loggerheads with the president for months, receiving support from several ministers and major foreign investors, as well as many ordinary South Africans and veterans of the ANC’s struggle against apartheid.
He campaigned for budget discipline and against corruption, but Mr Zuma’s allies have accused the minister of thwarting the president’s desire to enact radical policies to tackle racial inequality that has persisted since the ANC came to power in 1994 under Nelson Mandela.
Mr Gordhan called a press conference at which he said he learnt of his sacking on the television and dismissed the intelligence report as “absolute nonsense”.
“We hope more and more South Africans would make it clear that our country is not for sale,” he added.
Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s influential secretary general, said Mr Zuma did not consult the party’s top six leaders about most of the cabinet changes, saying a list of nominees “was thrown at us”.
“I’m very uncomfortable because areas where ministers do not perform have not been touched,” he said.
The party’s chief whip in parliament, Jackson Mthembu, said he opposed the removal of Mr Gordhan and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas. “Their crime is incorruptibility. We stand with them,” he said on Twitter.
The sacking of Mr Gordhan has brought into the open South Africa’s biggest political crisis in almost a decade. While a group of party veterans accused Mr Zuma of undermining the 105-year-old ANC, opposition parties are pushing for his ouster in parliament and several public protests were held. South African bank stocks tumbled and bonds plunged as the rand headed for its biggest weekly slide since 2015.
“Zuma’s actions are compelling some people within the ANC who have been standing on the sidelines to take action,” said Ongama Mtimka, a political science lecturer at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in the city of Port Elizabeth. “If it was unthinkable about five or six months ago that there may be a parliamentary coup; I think the time will be ripe for that.”
The cabinet changes come just nine months before Mr Zuma is due to step down as ANC leader, and exactly a year after the nation’s top court found that he violated his oath of office when he refused to repay taxpayer funds spent on his private home. His second and final term as president is due to end in 2019.
While Mr Ramaphosa is seen as a top contender to become the party’s next leader, his main rival is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the former head of the African Union Commission and the president’s ex-wife.
Mr Zuma replaced Mr Gordhan with home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba, 45, who has no financial or business experience.
While the ANC can place pressure on him to resign, only Parliament can force him to do so. The legislature is in recess until the end of next month, but the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party has petitioned speaker Baleka Mbete, a close Zuma ally and ANC chairwoman, to recall legislators next week to debate a motion of no confidence in him.
The ANC has used its 62 per cent majority in the 400-seat National Assembly to block four motions of no-confidence, which require a simple majority to pass, and one impeachment attempt filed by the opposition since Mr Zuma took office in May 2009. It has been comfortably the biggest party in South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994.
* Bloomberg and Agence France-Presse
