DANIEL SILKE: Zuma can't keep his hands off the ANC succession battle
To be seen as a recipient of Zuma’s political patronage may still come home to haunt those like Nkosazana-Dlamini Zuma
It’s going to be a long 11 months until the ANC’s elective conference in December. Within the last week alone, three significant developments have taken the succession battle into its next gear – and we are only entering week three of the new year. Firstly. President Jacob Zuma seems increasingly to be unable to help himself by staying out of the leadership fray. Suggestions by him that South Africa was ready for a female president is hardly earth-shattering. But in the context of his former wife formally being nominated by the ANCWL, his remarks may be seen as a fore-runner to favouritism. Taken together with a second presidential intervention that the ANC does not necessarily have to nominate the Deputy President as a successor, Zuma almost sounded as though he was putting the boot in Cyril Ramaphosa. Clearly, given the President’s elevated position, his early interference in aspects of the looming race – albeit relatively oblique – point towards an attempt to drive his succession...
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