{"id":30212,"date":"2016-11-11T02:05:15","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T02:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/s-africa-s-jacob-zuma-survives-no-confidence-vote\/"},"modified":"2016-11-11T02:05:31","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T02:05:31","slug":"s-africa-s-jacob-zuma-survives-no-confidence-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/s-africa-s-jacob-zuma-survives-no-confidence-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"S Africa’s Jacob Zuma survives no-confidence vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

{South Africa’s ruling ANC votes against motion to remove Zuma as opposition increases calls for him to leave office.}<\/p>\n

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma easily survived a third no-confidence vote in parliament in less than a year, as politicians from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) ignored opposition calls for his removal from office.<\/p>\n

Zuma, who has faced mounting criticism from within his own party, came under further pressure last week after a corruption probe raised fresh allegations of misconduct.<\/p>\n

But the ANC’s parliamentary majority delivered a resounding signal of support on Thursday, with 214 MPs voting against the opposition’s motion of no-confidence and 126 backing it. The abstentions totalled 59.<\/p>\n

Zuma’s victory was expected, despite Mmusi Maimane, the leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA) opposition party, appealing to ANC members to vote against their leader.<\/p>\n

“To put it plainly, we can choose Jacob Zuma, or we can choose South Africa,” Maimane told parliament during a fiery debate.<\/p>\n

“Many of you have been speaking out against him in recent weeks … I know that there are men and women in these ANC benches who want to do the right thing.”<\/p>\n

But Zuma, 74, who came to power in 2009, retains strong loyalty among ANC politicians and many party members.<\/p>\n

“The governing ANC had said it was united heading into this motion of no-confidence in President Zuma, and then in the end it followed through with actions,” Al Jazeera’s Tania Page, reporting from Cape Town, said.<\/p>\n

The no-confidence vote was the third in under a year, with the first two also defeated by wide margins.<\/p>\n

The corruption report by the country’s top watchdog raised accusations of possible criminal activity in Zuma’s relationship with the Guptas, a business family accused of wielding undue political influence.<\/p>\n

Increasing numbers of anti-apartheid veterans, ANC activists, trade unions, civil groups and business leaders have called for Zuma to resign in recent months.<\/p>\n

Zuma’s second term in office ends in 2019 and he is not eligible to run for president again.<\/p>\n

But the ANC is due to elect a new party leader at the end of next year, and could then decide to replace him as head of state.<\/p>\n

South Africa’s highest court this year found the president guilty of violating the constitution after he refused to repay taxpayers’ money used to refurbish his private rural house n Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal province.<\/p>\n

Following the ruling, Zuma paid back more than $500,000 in September.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{South Africa’s ruling ANC votes against motion to remove Zuma as opposition increases calls for him to leave office.} South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma easily survived a third no-confidence vote in parliament in less than a year, as politicians from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) ignored opposition calls for his removal from office. Zuma, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30212"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30212"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}