The heated parliamentary debate came after the country’s Constitutional Court passed a judgment saying that the president had violated the law and must pay back the money he spent for upgrades on his private home in Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal province.
Advertisement
The leader of the opposition party DA, Mmusi Maimane has requested the motion for Zuma’s impeachment.
South Africa’s parliament was set to overthrow Zuma as the President as the Constitutional Court claimed he had violated their constitution on Tuesday, yet failed to get enough votes to do it so.
African Union Commission head Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who is tipped to take over the leadership of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress, will step down at the end of her four-year term in July, her spokesman said on Wednesday.
The debate to impeach South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, was delayed on Tuesday as opposition MPs demanded the speaker Baleka Mbete excuse herself as presiding officer. The ANC, by sticking with a leader who appears not to believe this, is making a mockery of the democracy that it and others fought so hard to establish.
The motion to remove Zuma is unlikely to pass because it requires a two-thirds majority for approval.
While Zuma apologized for the frustration and confusion the scandal had caused, he said he acted in good faith and never intentionally did anything illegal. “That voice is very strong… it’s the voice of the people who recognise the strength of the Constitution and value the decision of the Constitutional Court”, he said.
Mr Zuma had been found by South Africa’s top constitutional court to have unjustifiably used hundreds of millions in state funds to fix up his private property. ANC MPs argued, however, that the president’s offence had not been serious enough to warrant impeachment.
Meanwhile, former finance minister Trevor Manuel has reportedly called on President Zuma to step down.
He said that the ANC members needed to also ask whether the party had conflated the role of the executive and Parliament. They included former deputy secretary general of the ANC Cheryl Carolus, ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang, former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils, former Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, former Constitutional Court Justice Zak Yacoob, Anglican Bishop Joe Seoka, and former ANC Youth League deputy president Ronald Lamola.
Advertisement
Zuma apologised in a national television address on Friday, but made it clear that he had no intention of responding to calls to resign.
