South Africa: What's Love Got Toi Do With It?

SOUTH AFRICA

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

As the African National Congress called him on the carpet to demand he resign, South African President Jacob Zuma insisted he’s done nothing wrong and told his detractors that “the people still love him.”

Zuma told his interlocutors from the party’s National Working Committee that only the National Executive Committee (NEC) had the powers to recall him and offered to present his case to them directly, Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper reported.

The working committee tried to pressure the president by suggesting he could lose a vote of no confidence set for February 22and by pointing out that an impeachment process could cost him his pension. But he was unmoved, despite an ongoing probe of alleged corruption related to his connections with the powerful Gupta family.

At the end of the debate, the working committee decided to hold an emergency NEC meeting on Wednesday in Cape Town to decide Zuma’s fate – on the eve of his State of the Nation Address.