Zuma’s moves risk split in S Africa ruling alliance

Bloomberg

South African President Jacob Zuma’s decision to fire communist party leader Blade Nzimande from his cabinet is widening a rift with two of the African National Congress’s closest allies before a key leadership conference in December.
In dismissing Nzimande as higher education minister, Zuma, 75, targeted the communist party, which along with the main labor confederation, Cosatu, has said the president must step down because of a series of scandals that has rocked his eight-year-old administration. Both groups also back Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to become the next ANC leader over Zuma’s
preferred candidate, former African Union Commission chairwoman and his ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
“The communist party standing on its own has been a major irritant and he’s trying to send a message that he is not impressed with their public attacks on him and his administration,” said Ivor Sarakinsky, a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Governance in Johannesburg.
Over the longer term, the rift within the ANC’s 30-year alliance with the communists and organized labor poses a threat to its ability to retain the power it first won in the post-apartheid elections in 1994.
Disgruntlement with Zuma’s rule saw the party’s share of the vote touch an all-time
low of 54 percent in last year’s municipal elections, costing it control of Pretoria, the capital, and the economic hub of Johannesburg. Several senior party leaders have warned that it’s
at risk of losing its absolute
majority in 2019.