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Workers Vanguard No. 1128 |
23 February 2018
The closing date for news in this issue is 20 February.
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South Africa: Zuma Out, Ramaphosa In ANC Factions: No Side for Workers For a Black-Centered Workers Republic!
We print below excerpts from an article written in January by our comrades of Spartacist South Africa for their newspaper. That month, the African National Congress (ANC) removed Jacob Zuma as head of the party. On February 14, after more than a week of tense behind-the-scenes talks, the ANC leadership succeeded in pressuring him to resign as president of South Africa, making way for the new ANC head, Cyril Ramaphosa, to take over. That same day, police raided a residence of the Guptas—a capitalist family originally from India with ties to Zuma—carrying out multiple arrests.
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The African National Congress’s 54th national conference, held in December, was one of the most bitterly divided in its 106-year history. And while the official party rhetoric since the conference has shifted to emphasising “unity,” the results of the conference show clearly that the ruling party remains evenly split between the two main factions. On the one hand, the faction behind Cyril Ramaphosa won the prize of getting him elected to succeed Jacob Zuma as president of the ANC. At the same time, the main rival faction—supporters of Zuma, who remains president of South Africa—is well represented in the ANC’s leading bodies.
The (mainly white) big bourgeoisie and its media mouthpieces were, for the most part, firmly in Ramaphosa’s corner. They breathed a sigh of relief over his victory, with the rand gaining significantly against the U.S. dollar. This relief, however, has been tempered by concern that Ramaphosa could be constrained, by a divided ANC leadership, in acting swiftly on the capitalists’ most pressing issues. In particular, the latter are hoping that Ramaphosa can broker a deal to quickly remove Zuma and his close allies from their positions in the government. There are worries that Zuma and Co. could increasingly resort to populist manoeuvring in order to hold on to power.
(read on)
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