Ramaphosa targeted as South Africa’s ANC succession race turns ugly

Bloomberg

The race to lead South Africa’s ruling party is turning increasingly nasty. Allegations that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, a front-runner for the post, had extra-marital affairs with at least eight women and paid expenses for some of them were splashed across the front page of the Sunday Independent, which cited Ramaphosa’s private emails to back up the story. It didn’t say how it obtained them. Ramaphosa called the report part of a covert operation to halt his drive to root out corruption in the ruling African National Congress.
“We already had a somewhat toxic political environment in South Africa and it’s just got a bit more ugly,” Daniel Silke, director of Political Futures Consultancy in Cape Town, said by phone. “Extra-marital affairs have not had any dramatic effect on leaders’ political fortunes. For those who wish to damage the Ramaphosa campaign, I would say they would need to try a little bit harder.”
The controversy comes less than four months before the ANC is due to elect a new leader, who’ll also be its presidential candidate in 2019 elections. Ramaphosa’s main rival is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, 68, the former chairwoman of the African Union Commission and
President Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife.