This week, unemployed graduates, struggling business owners and military veterans marched through the eastern South African city of Pietermaritzburg, chanting the name “Jacob Zuma.”
Some 500 demonstrators brought parts of the city to a standstill in KwaZulu-Natal province, the traditional stronghold of South Africa and Zuma, the former president of the African National Congress, which has ruled the country for 30 years. .
The protests, demanding water and electricity, are about mundane local concerns, and are an important move for Mr. Zuma’s new party, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), which is now dominated by its former ally. It was also a show of power aimed at eroding one’s position.
“We have to fight to change the situation,” said Kumbuzile Phungula, 49, who joined the march after weeks of water cuts in her neighborhood. “MK values change.”
The marchers represented Mr Zuma’s new party as street vendors sold Jacob Zuma T-shirts and MK-branded energy drinks and men in military uniforms from the long-disbanded anti-apartheid movement lined the crowd. Was. He is at odds with the ruling party, which they see as ineffective and corrupt. Mr Zuma’s supporters have now formed a large enough bloc to make him a potential kingmaker in South Africa’s May 29 general election.
Mr Zuma himself was not present at the Pietermaritzburg march. Instead, he was preparing for a hearing in South Africa’s Constitutional Court on Friday to question whether the 82-year-old Zuma was fit to run at all. He resigned from his top job in 2018 amid widespread protests, and three years later was found guilty of failing to appear in a corruption investigation and sentenced to prison, but ultimately sentenced to 15 months. He served only two months of his prison sentence.
Mr Zuma is also already facing factionalism within his nascent party. MK leaders have accused the party of forging campaign signatures, and police have said they are investigating the claims, which Mr Zuma has dismissed as unwarranted. . baseless slander.
However, none of these potential obstacles deterred MK members from taking action or diminished Zuma’s status as a political threat. A lower court has already ruled that he can run for president, and the MK has scheduled his next court appearance as a campaign event, while Zuma is expected to address his supporters. .
Both Mr. Zuma and his party quickly gained momentum, capitalizing on internal leadership conflicts within the ANC and its failure to provide basic services to South Africans. Since forming just five months ago, MK has transformed the country’s political landscape, becoming one of the most visible opposition parties in a crowded arena.
Supporters of Mr Zuma, who heads the party currently blamed for the country’s problems, included many who took part in demonstrations in KwaZulu-Natal, the country’s second most populous province. , Zuma’s supporters look back fondly on his 10 years in office.
Lucky Sibambo, a forestry engineer who described himself as a political bystander before the MK was formed and who helped mobilize the march, said that Zuma’s support for expropriating and redistributing land for free was due to black people like him He said he believes it will help businesses.
Shumelele Mthembu, 28, said that despite having a postgraduate degree in clinical psychology, she was unable to find gainful employment. “The ANC is over,” she said, watching her march from the balcony of her youth training centre. “We are tired of lies and money going missing.”
Mnqobi Mesezane, 34, who has campaigned for Zuma on university campuses, also referred to Zuma’s pledge to make university education free of charge. Mr. Mesesane dismissed the corruption accusations that dogged the former president during his tenure as a political ploy to stop Mr. Zuma from challenging the black political elite and ending economic domination of white South Africans. did.
“Poverty has a color, and it’s black,” Mezzane said.
Zuma has used his legal battles as fodder for campaign speeches alleging political persecution, and his supporters have rebranded his presidential controversy as a success story. But while his popularity has contributed to the MK party’s growth, the scandal-prone former president also has responsibilities as party leader, said Mashpie Herbert Maselmul, a professor of public affairs at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria. said in an interview.
Mr Macelmul said it was clear every time Mr Zuma addressed a crowd that his personal grievances were shaping the party’s policy. For example, Mr Zuma has called for judicial reform, reflecting his repeated claims that he is a target of the courts.
He added, “If he is no longer the face of MK, it will also be the end of MK.”
But so far, MK’s growth has eroded support from older opposition parties such as the country’s official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters. One former Democratic Alliance councilor, pastor Sean Adkins, even said at the Pietermaritzburg march that he had decided to defect to MK because he was fed up with delays in housing construction in his neighbourhood. “I’m confident,” Adkins said.
Support for the ANC has been declining for years, and the ruling party is going head-to-head with a new rival as it faces a clear threat from the MK.
The ANC recently sent senior leaders and alliance partners to what the party described as “a week of intensive campaigning in KwaZulu-Natal” in an effort to curry favor with local voters. Prominent ANC figures fanned out across the state, along with hundreds of volunteers, making more personal home visits ahead of larger rallies.
Former ANC state chairperson and presidential candidate Dr Zweli Mkhize said: “We are doing everything in our power to actually talk to people and tell them that the ANC still exists, that it is still strong and that it is still worth supporting. I’m doing my best,” he said. He is campaigning in the Eastwood area of Pietermaritzburg.
Their efforts have paid off for some locals.
One voter, Queenie Potgieter, 65, said she would have supported MK if the ANC had not “warmed up” her home, but Dr Mkhize’s visit changed her mind.
As Dr Mkhize handed out T-shirts and sarongs in party colors, 21-year-old first-time voter Tusiwe Mkabela burst into tears at the sight of a man she thought was famous. She said the ANC has provided her family with welfare and food parcels and she believes they will also secure her a job.
However, Annalyn Mérimée, 28, who has never voted, dismissed the ANC’s leading figures with a sidelong glare. “They only do this when voting,” she said. “Where will you be for the rest of this year?”
Dr Mkhize said the ANC recognized its failures and had no intention of underestimating Mr Zuma’s support or voter dissatisfaction in the state. It was under Mr Zuma that the ANC itself grew in KwaZulu-Natal, and it was Mr Zuma who groomed the province’s current leadership, Dr Mkhize said.
Dr Mkhize said he was cautiously confident, noting that the ANC had dealt with secessionists before.
“The only complication for us is that President Zuma has never campaigned on the other side,” he said.
