Our website use cookies to improve and personalize your experience and to display advertisements (if any). Our website may also include cookies from third parties like Google Adsense, Google Analytics, and Youtube. By using the website, you consent to the use of cookies.

Revealed: Why Zuma is angry at Ramaphosa

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER

JACOB ZUMA, a former ANC president and ex-head of the South African government, launched a scathing attack on his successor Cyril Ramaphosa, accusing him of hanging him to dry, leaked notes have revealed.

The notes show that Zuma still harbours some bitterness over the manner he was removed from the highest office in the country and replaced by Ramaphosa.

Notes of the March 26 meeting between Zuma and the top leadership of the ANC, commonly referred to as the “Top Six”, disclosed that he turned down several attempts by Ramaphosa to meet with him. 

Advertisements

The former president also unveiled his unhappiness at the ANC, charging that the party has not defended him when he was under attack in and out of Parliament.

He also went to extensive lengths to outline why he has problems with the judiciary, the Constitutional Court and Zondo Commission.

On Ramaphosa, Zuma took issue with the president’s decision to withdraw an appeal he had lodged against a report by the then Public Protector Thuli Madonsela.

“By the stroke of your might pen, Mr President, you took away an opportunity for the Constitutional Court, as the highest court in the land, to test the constitutionality of the former Public Protector’s recommendations.  Notably, Mr President, you decided to deal me with a cost order… It cannot be suggested that you did not know that your decision would prejudice me,” Zuma said.

READ:  72 dead, 1 234 arrested as violence, looting continue

He then accused Ramaphosa of unfairly and unjustifiably stopping funding for his criminal trial. 

“This is contrary to the agreements I had with the State State and the State attorney. You would recall that this was not in any event practice in government. Comrades, you know very well stopping legal funding would  prejudice me immensely as I was facing the State with limitless resources.  To this date, I have no resources and for almost three years, my lawyers are helping me without being paid. As I start with the criminal trial in the coming months, I face an insurmountable task and am at the mercy of the lawyers who have decided themselves to assist me when my own Comrades have forsaken me. Comrades you neglected and continue to neglect me. You know the implications – but perhaps that is what some of you hope for: that I finally go to jail by whatever means or tactics.”

Zuma also revealed that the South African government had sent messages to several heads of states to discourage them from meeting him. He said Inkosi Mandla Mandela, a Member of Parliament and grandson to the late Nelson Mandela, went to Qatar to convince the Emir of that state not to meet him. 

“You have worked hard to stop me from getting anything to help me on my side…No one can face the trial I am about to face without resources, but because I am Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, only me, I am going to face it. But my own comrades have facilitated that I must be suffocated financially so that I am buried once and for all for crimes I did not commit. Fortunately, and with no consequences but alone with my lawyers, I will fight to prove my innocence and will endeavour to reveal who the criminals are in our movement,” the former president said.

READ:  Death toll in South Africa riots rises to 337

Zuma said the ANC did not support him:

  • When he was “targeted” with an investigation into the arms deal.
  • In 2003 when the National Prosecuting Authority made damning allegations but did not charge him.
  • When various tactics were used to stop him from being part of the ANC leadership. These included character “character assasination, getting me imprisoned, rape cases planned for me and even assasination.”
  • When his tenure as president was being discarded as “nine wasted years”.
  • When some ANC members worked with the opposition to remove him as president.
  • When he faced “unjustified attacks that I assisted the Guptas to capture the State”.
  • When the Nkandla saga, involving R250-million spent to upgrade his house, unfolded. 

Zuma reiterated his stance on the judiciary in SA. 

“I have noticed with disappointment, deep concern and seething anger the degradation of our judicial independence and judicial lapses in the protection of our freedoms. I have never believed that the tendencies of the apartheid judicial system would be as tenacious as they appear to have been in shaping and influencing the character of the current judiciary,” Zuma said.

Advertisements

Zuma said he had never enjoyed a single day of freedom. His woes, he said, started soon after the dawn of democracy and since then he has been a “permanent target and scapegoat of forces internal and external to our movement”.

Advertisements
By The African Mirror

MORE FROM THIS SECTION