Duduzane Zuma defends spurning his father’s MK Party

“We need something new and fresh,” former president Jacob Zuma’s son, Duduzane Zuma, said when explaining why he did not join his father’s new political formation, the MK Party, and decided to start his own party. 

The business-person-turned-politician announced plans in January to register his own party, All Game Changers, a few weeks after his father publicly said he was campaigning for the MK party.

“I think it has been a long period of the same faces and same ideology. We need something new and fresh and we are those people,” he said in an interview with Newzroom Afrika.

The ANC leadership has described Duduzane’s move as a “lack of confidence” in his father’s new political home. Duduzane said forming the new party was his effort to ditch old political ideologies, including those of the ANC. He was a member of an ANC branch in KwaZulu-Natal. 

“The ANC has had some massive strides and some losses. But where we are at, I do not think it is the best [party] to address challenges the country faces. They are not able to evolve at this point. We need new people, we need new visionaries. Everyone needs everyone to put their shoulder to the wheel.” 

He said there was no bad blood between him and his father as he had given him a “heads-up”. 

Duduzane said his party’s manifesto would focus on bringing solutions to service delivery issues such as load-shedding, unemployment and ways to make young people “not dependent on social welfare”. Like his father, Duduzane said he wanted to make changes to the constitution should his party take over governance.

Jacob Zuma visited the Rivers of Living Waters Ministries of rape accused Bishop Bafana Stephen Zondo on Sunday, where he made his MK party election speech. In it, he made promises to the congregation, including that he wanted to change the constitution as he believed it was “unfair to African people”.

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