Former ANC president Jacob Zuma has seemingly accepted his expulsion from the ANC after the period to appeal lapsed without him exercising his right to challenge it.
Zuma is steadfast that he does not recognise the current ANC as the one that he joined decades ago, before rising to the position of party president and later as head of state.
Addressing the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party media conference this week, Zuma hinted at what he could have possibly told the ANC disciplinary committee, which issued him with the expulsion sanction.
Now leading the official opposition, the old man from Nkandla seems to have accepted that it is the end of the road for him and the ANC.
In Zuma’s strongly held view, his insistence that he will “die ANC” remains intact, for that is the “ANC of our ancestors”, which he maintains is not the same as the current ANC he believes has deviated from the original ANC.
Now outside, he insists he will continue to fight for the heritage of the “original ANC” from the MK Party ranks.
His tactical move to split the ANC into two characters – the original ANC and the “ANC of Ramaphosa”– was fruitful for his fledging MKP, which almost hollowed out the ANC support base in KwaZulu-Natal in the May 29 general elections.
It now remains to be seen if his message, which he says is the gospel he will continue to preach, will bear any fruit with the official termination of his ANC membership.
In his shift to a more aggressive strategy to undermine the ANC from the outside, Zuma is now framing and selling MKP as a replica of the original ANC.
“The reason I said I would never leave the ANC is because I love history and I know history. The ANC was established by our ancestors – the traditional leaders, our pastors, and our intellectuals to defend the black person who was being suppressed by the whites,” he said.
“And they knew what they were doing, and it was an organisation for all of us. They were uniting us because prior to that, the unity of black people was not at that level.”
Building the MKP as the alternative liberation movement was the only option left in his arsenal of political tricks to take the fight to the oppressors, he insists.
“I want you to look at MK as the solution to the problems of this country, and it is taken from the old ANC, not the current ANC of Ramaphosa. I have never seen people with such cold hearts as the current ANC leaders, they do not care about their own.”
